Swiss-Moroccan Doctor Released After Years of Turmoil in Southern Morocco

In choosing to return to Morocco to settle in M’hamid El Ghizlane, an underprivileged region since the closure of the border between the two countries plagued by all kinds of trafficking (cigarettes, drugs, camels...), Dr. Labbas Sbaï was far from imagining what awaited him. He created a nature reserve there to host gazelles, fennecs, desert partridges, and even jackals, "provided they do not attack the goats." His goal is to revive the Oum Lâalag oasis, belonging to his family, located about fifty kilometers west of M’hamid El Ghizlane. "In the 1970s, the 30-kilometer-long and 20-kilometer-wide Lake Iriki dried up in a few months. The migratory birds disappeared," he had told Mondafrique.

His misfortune is to display his opposition "to the multiple trafficking that thrives" in the region "with the blessing of the local authorities, elected officials, the caïd and the prosecutor." He will be arrested in 2006, then sentenced to six months in prison, for "contempt of a magistrate" and "disorder in a public place", before being released under pressure from the population. Labbas Sbaï was arrested again in 2010. After his release from prison, he chaired a vigilance committee of the nomads of the region which aims to denounce the expropriations of lands to the detriment of certain tribes and the thefts of camels. He will be arrested. Tried on May 26, 2022 for "contempt", he was sentenced to two months in prison.

His new stay in prison will not be at all easy. "They hit me, they hit me, I lost consciousness twice... Here it’s Guantanamo, here it’s Abu Ghraib...", Dr. Sbaï confided to his brother Ibrahim. Ali Sbaï, another of his brothers, a former senior civil servant in Geneva, returns to Morocco to inquire about the situation. During the exchanges he had with the prison director on May 31, the latter acknowledged that the surgeon had indeed received blows, "but involuntary, in a misunderstanding with a guard [...] We examined the incident and concluded that it did not require prosecution..."

A few days later, the detainee’s health deteriorated. Thanks to an intervention by the Rabat authorities, this member of a great Sahrawi family, a friend of King Mohammed V, was released from prison on Monday, June 20. "He is very weak. We will transport him to a hospital in Marrakech so that he can finally be treated," Ali Sbaï, the brother of Labbas, confided to the same media.