Equipe Media – Occupied Western Sahara January 25, 2026
This Sunday morning, Sahrawi activist El Kentaoui El Bar, 34, was released from prison after serving a ten-year sentence in Moroccan prisons. A former geography student at Cadi Ayyad University in Marrakech, El Bar was originally arrested in 2016.
El Bar was detained as part of a group of 12 students known as the « Companions of the Martyr El Wali. » While some members of the group were released after serving three years, El Bar and several others were sentenced to a full decade in prison.
During his imprisonment, human rights sources report that El Kentaoui El Bar was subjected to mistreatment and torture at Oudaya prison in Marrakech and other facilities. These conditions led him to undertake several hunger strikes in protest of his treatment and the circumstances of his detention.
The Moroccan authorities arrested the group of Sahrawi students, who were active in union work, following clashes with a Moroccan student faction that resulted in the death of a student. However, human rights organizations have highlighted that no concrete evidence was provided to support these allegations. Activists maintain that the courts relied on questionable police reports specifically formulated to target Sahrawi activists opposed to the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara.
