Following some reliable information reaching the « Polisario confidentiel », Algeria would have handed over a memo to the MINURSO and the UN Refugee Agency requesting that their staff working in the Tindouf camps « won’t move alone anymore, but in groups », stating that this measure concerns « more particularly women alone who have to move during the night ». Without clearly referring to the rape issue and the violence used against Rahmouna Dahousse, Algeria, through the voice of the official in charge of relations with the MINURSO and its permanent representative to the United Nations, has recognized that the security of the international officials in Tindouf is no more certain. Those “recommendations” of the Algerian authorities fit with the concern of trying to contain the increasing criminality inside the camps and to reduce the risk of damaging their reputation in case another international official came to be victim of violence. Making an anonymous declaration, an official from the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs gives way to his anger: “It is not up to the Ministry to do the work requested from the army, we deal with diplomacy not with security”.
In fact, inside the department led by Mourad Medelci, they are more and more embarrassed by the deficiency accused in the management of security in Tindouf camps, thus creating almost everyday incidents with the MINURSO, and the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has to assume the consequences afterwards, in dealing with the international institutions. Moreover, the situation of security in Algeria seems itself to be more and more feverish, which does not put things right in Tindouf camps. Just for reminding, last Thursday, the Director General of the Algerian National Security, Ali Tounsi, has been assassinated by one of his assistants “in great madness attack”, if this does not look like a Soviet release….
