Polisario Front denies detaining Australian journalists

Sydney - The Polisario Front, which is waging a three-decade-old battle for self-rule in the disputed Western Sahara, on Tuesday denied it had detained two Australian filmmakers in Algeria.

The denial came after Australian officials indicated the pair was briefly held by the Algerian-backed group last week before being allowed to leave northwest Africa following "vigorous representations" by Canberra.

"The Australian filmmakers were never detained by Polisario at any stage during their stay in the Saharawi refugee camps," said Kamal Fadel, Polisario's representative in Australia.

"Polisario extended assistance and cooperation to the journalists who were producing a documentary on family separation due to the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara," he added in a statement.

But Sydney-based independent filmmakers Violeta Ayala and Daniel Fallshaw said in a statement from Paris that they were held for five hours by Polisario Front officials who objected to their attention to issues of race.

"Toward the very end of our most recent stay in the camps difficulties began to arise between ourselves and the Polisario," Ayala and Fallshaw said in a statement provided to AFP by their Sydney-based producer Tom Zubrycki.

"The Polisario began to believe we were straying from the focus of our film, that of family separation and giving too much attention to Fetim's (a key protagonist) black extended family and friends.

"The following day ... we were picked up by Polisario officials and were held for a total of five hours," they said.

Following negotiations with Polisario officials in the presence of UN officers, "we were allowed to leave with the UN officers," the pair said, adding they were looked after and treated with courtesy.

Zubrycki also said the pair were "briefly detained", but denied media reports from north Africa stating that the focus of the film was slavery.

"That's a real distortion," he said. "There could be an element of slavery ... but that is part of a bigger film but not part of the main story."

The Polisario Front has been fighting for self-rule in Western Sahara, which was annexed by Morocco in the 1970s after the withdrawal of the region's former colonial power Spain and neighbour Mauritania.

Agence France Presse