Take the dune – Liberation

Ivry-sur-Seine, Val-de-Marne, a gray and cloudy Wednesday. One of the only two days of the week when Claude Mangin can hope to hear the voice of her husband, imprisoned in Morocco for fifteen years. She reactivated the ringtone of her phone, dreading that she cannot enjoy this precious moment. That morning, Naâma Asfari, activist of the Sahrawi cause, is long overdue: twenty minutes of silence more than usual. An « unknown » number is finally displayed. « Hi, I dreamed of you. You were parachute, I looked at you from afar. You looked happy « begins the one who serves a sentence of thirty years of imprisonment, pronounced in 2013 by a military court in Rabat, for criminal association, outrage and violence to public officials as well as voluntary homicides. A condemnation based on « Confessions extorted under torture »according to the United Nations Committee against Torture. By his side, in Kenitra prison, a French -speaking goalkeeper listens to each word exchanged. « It’s a good sign, it may mean that you will soon be released »wants to believe his wife, more than 2,000 kilometers from the cell he shares with five fellow prisoners. «  »Inch Allah ”, he replied.

It is from the southern suburbs of Paris, that Claude Mangin, 68, has been leading a fierce fight for years to release his companion. The story of the couple is intimately linked to that of the conflict in the Sahara-Western, this desert band stuck between the Atlantic Ocean and Mauritania, which the Morocco and the separatists of the Polisario Front are competed, supported by Algeria. In her little on -room apartment, where she willingly welcomes her guests with dates and cuba coffee, the woman with silver hair and made -up eyes of blue mascara is used to organize a long step to renew the interest in the Sahrawi cause, which she describes as« Forgotten » and of« Invisible ». Until the end of June, the one who shared her career between teaching history-geography and humanitarian commitment, will cross France, Spain and Morocco in around twenty stages, meeting elected officials and associative activists, to Algeciras, which separates Europe from Africa. From there, she hopes to join Kenitra, where Naâma Asfari is detained.

But Claude Mangin knows that the doors of the Kingdom are likely to stay closed. Between 2016 and 2019, she was repressed there on five times, prohibited from territory before he even was able to tread the Moroccan soil. He is criticized for constituting a « Risk of public order disorder ». Bane of the diet, it was also the target PEGASUS spy software. Hops that pushed her to start a hunger strike for a month in April 2018. “For me, it was not particularly difficult, but my parents couldn’t take it anymore. They have already lost three children. They didn’t want to lose a fourth ”she confides with Aplomb, the firm gaze and the voice laid, like a real iron lady. The life of the activist, the eldest of a siblings of six children, was punctuated by dramas: one of her sisters died in an accident almost thirty-five years ago, another died of cancer at the age of 42, and her brother died in a helicopter crash in Corsica in the summer of 2023.

Born in 1956 in Brochon (Côte-d’Or), Claude Mangin is the daughter of a professor of archeology and a professor of history-geography. Of the « Left left Catholics »children of peasants. Her first contact with the Sahrawi cause arises as she is North Africa Mission in charge of the CCFD-Terre Solidarity association, working for the support of the most vulnerable populations. It flies for the first time to the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf, in the southwest of Algeria in 1990. “I had vaguely heard of the Polisario Front, but I did not know that the group still existed. When I arrived, I discovered the sky, the earth, the stars … At night in Tindouf, the absence of electricity makes the spectacle grand. I am at the end of the world, and I understand that a people have lived here for fifteen years. ”

It was in 2002 that Claude Mangin, single and childless, crossed paths with Naâma Asfari, now 55 years old. She rents her Housing in Ivry-sur-Seine to this student in international law at the University of Nanterre, who has just obtained a scholarship to learn French. At that time, she worked full -time in the Sahrawi camps, made of tents and fortune shelters. During a brief return to France, she asked for authorization from Naâma Asfari to organize a dinner with friends in her apartment. “He accepted and cooked us a tagine. It was from there that I fell in love. ” They married in 2003 on the sly in Tan-Tan, in the southwest of Morocco. « He didn’t want his father to know that he was not going to marry his Germaine cousin. Before our marriage, we had to buy a false certificate of virginityshe recalls with fun. Our wishes were exchanged in an old dusty office. ” Claude Mangin, who defines himself as a « Left Catholic » Having voted in LFI in the first round of the last presidential election, stands out as an ardent defender of the Sahrawi cause, traversing international stands like a tireless ambassador of self -determination.

Among Asfari, political commitment is transmitted from generation to generation. In 1976, after the Spanish withdrawal from the Sahara-Western, the father of Naâma, a former caravan, was thrown into prison near Ouarzazate. It will noted in 1991. His son then took up the torch of the struggle and became the vice-president of the Committee for the respect of human rights and human rights in the Sahara-Western. But on November 7, 2010, Naâma Asfari was arrested in the city of Tindouf. Violent clashes broke out during the dismantling of the Gdeim Izik camp, bringing together more than 15,000 Sahrawis. Eleven members of the police are killed, according to Rabat. “Naâma disappeared for five days – the five longest days of my life. When he was reappeared in the Laâyoune court, his body wore traces of torture ”says Claude Mangin, with deep bitterness.

Naâma Asfari and 24 activists were sentenced to heavy sorrows. On October 11, 2023, the UN working group on arbitrary detention qualified these illegal incarcerations. Since then, Claude Mangin is tirelessly fighting for the release of her husband, despite several burnout. « For her, that’s all that mattersblows a friend, also activist of the Sahrawi cause. How can we live knowing that your husband has been locked up for fifteen years and that he has so much time to serve? ” Her mantra for 2025: Hope and resistance.

1956 Birth in Brochon (Côte-d’Or).

1990 First visit to Tindouf.

2002 First meeting with her future husband.

2013 Conviction of Naâma Asfari at 30 years in prison.

2025 Walk for Freedom from Ivry-sur-Seine in Kenitra.