Sahrawi children, who are sent to Cuba, follow tough military training and courses of making explosives. Ph: Archives.

Some former Cuban senior officials confessed that children, who were snatched from their parents in Tindouf camps and deported to Cuban “Youth Island”, endured ill-treatment.

“These children followed military training and courses on the making of explosives,” said former Cuban instructor, Dariel Alarcon.

Dariel Alarcon, known as “Benigno”, testified in a documentary entitled “Cuba and Polisario Front: crime partners” that he was in charge of making Sahrawi children, barely nine years old, undergo a military training.

Alarcon, now exiled in France, recalled boats carrying an "incredibly" high number of Sahrawi children, who later were sent to "Youth island” under military control with no hope of escaping.”

“We taught children how to make home-made explosives with such products as sugar, coffee, sulphur, and nitroglycerine,” he said, revealing that during these courses “several children were killed. Their bodies should still be buried in the island if they were not exhumed,” said Alarcon.

Juan Vives, former agent of Cuban secret services, published a documentary under the title “El Magnifico” in which he described the inhumane condition of children sent from the Polisario-controlled Tindouf camps, South-west Algeria, to the Latin American country.

In the documentary, Vives said that the Moroccan Sahrawi children were sent to schools, which were established especially for them, to follow their politically oriented studies.

“Children were obliged to work in the fields in the morning and go to school in the afternoon. Some did not cease to cry, claiming their parents. It was inhumane. Some arrived so young to Cuba that they hardly remembered from where they came. And it is very inhumane,” said Vives.

The former agent said that some young people stayed in Cuba over 12 years, admitting that his country hosted “a network of kidnapping children.”

The documentary, which indicated that 2,000 to 3,000 young Sahrawis are still in Cuba and hundreds of children are still being sent each year, talked about other abuses exerted by the Polisario, including the embezzlement of the international aids and the inhumane treatment of the Moroccan detainees in Tindouf camps.

The DVD documentary was screened during the Moroccan delegation's tour to several US cities in order to draw the attention of the American public opinion, particularly the Christian community, to the plight of the sequestered population in the camps.

During some meetings held in Trenton, New Jersey, Sarasota, Florida and Jacksonville, the members of the Moroccan delegation presented copies of this documentary to religious leaders to share it with their communities and show them the real face of the so-called Polisario.

The Moroccan delegation, composed of Saadani Maa Oulainine, Boussoula Mohammed Ebeya, Bachir Edkhil, Ali Najab and Ali Jaouhar, delivered poignant testimonies on the torture they endured during their detention in Tindouf camps.