The Polisario Front announced on Monday the arrest of 19 Moroccans for smuggling and drug trafficking. Through its media outlets, the separatist movement is trying to draw attention away from the drug trafficking war that broke off earlier this month between Brahim Ghali and Mohamed Lamine Ould El Bouhali's gangs. According to pro-Polisario media platforms, 19 Moroccan nationals were arrested on Monday near Kotlat Zemour for drug trafficking and smuggling. The movement indicates that the alleged traffickers, also known as al-Hamala, were «transporting drugs to the east of Moroccan military wall». A different online newspaper, close to the Front, stated that a «vehicle used for transfer operation was confiscated, while another vehicle managed escape». The pro-Polisario outlets, furthermore, confirmed the arrest insisting this time that «the Moroccan smugglers» were arrested on a Sunday evening around 7. 30 pm while trying to transfer drugs near a region called «Aghchan Lbid» south-eastern Tindouf. «the detained are from the southern region of Morocco which explains their hidden agenda trying to get Sahrawis into drug trafficking», Futurosahara announces today. The same source also indicates that the Minurso mission has visited the Moroccan alleged traffickers quoting a Sahrawi official. «After receiving the documents of the detainees by the Sahrawi army, MINURSO was allowed to visit them and see their situation», the sahraoui official told the pro polisario newspaper adding that this would «open the way for the UN mission to mediate in this file in the future». It points out saying that the Moroccan media «neglected the arrest of the 19 Moroccan smugglers and did not come out with an official statement regarding that». A drug trafficking war in the camp of Tindouf In fact, earlier this month, drug trafficking in the Tindouf camp has taken a worrying turn. Gangs close to Brahim Ghali and those loyal to his opponent, Mohamed Lamine Ould El Bouhali clashed on the 7th of June 2017. The two camps engaged in a gunfight opening fire in broad day-light. A source from the Sahara told Yabiladi amid the gangs' clash that the «Front's militia closely watched the scene and listened to the screams of women on the run, the shooting, bullets and the whirring of the brand new 4x4 vehicles engines. They did not intervene to cease the fight and restore orcder, leaving the criminal gang close to Ghali impose itself». A media platform close to Lamine Ould El Bouhadi partially confirmed the gunfight clashes. Last February, Algerian authorities sent a military senior official to the Tindouf camps in order to mediate for a truce between the two parties which have been fighting to control drug trafficking and smuggling in the region. Furthermore, the Mauritanian Ministry of Defense warned in an emergency statement broadcast on its national TV on the 13th of July citizens to wander cross the closed military zone in the north of the country. As reported by Futurosahara, that the «embargo area is located near the road between the Saharawi refugee camps and northern Mauritania, the main route used almost daily by many Sahrawi citizens and traders as they travel to the Mauritanian town of Zoueirat through the northern regions of Mauritania».
