LEFTIST WOMEN DIE IN PRISON

MOROCCO

(LNS) Saida Menebhi, a young left-wing militant of the Moroccan opposition, died in a Casablanca prison December 11, 1977 after 32 days of a hungar strike. Saida was among several hundred militants condemned to long prison terms in the political trial that ended January, 1977 in Casablanca. The majority of those arrested were members of the illegal opposition to the notoriously repressive regime of King Hassan II.

In league with France and with U.S. support, Hassan's government is waging a war against POLISARIO, the liberation movement engaged for more than four years in a guerrilla war for the Independence of the people of the Sahara. Citicorp announced recently that a group of U.S. banks will loan $325 million to support the regime, hardpressed by its continuing war against POLISARIO,

Salda Menebhl

"The ruthless repression in Morocco goes largely unnoticed in the world press because It is concealed behind a facade of legality and 'democratic procedure," said Henry Leclerc, a French lawyer who participated in the defense of Moroccan political prisoners. "Saida Menebhi was in prison for her ideas and her ideas alone."

Kept in near-isolation from other prisoners and from the outside world, prisoners have been subject to constant torture, forbidden to have visits from lawyers or family and not permitted to receive literature. In a statement recently smuggled out of the Casablanca prison, prisoners described the conditions of their confinement:

"These recent months, the persecution and terror has become increasingly brutal. The administration has forced many of us into solitary confinement for long periods for no particular reason, inflicting constant torture on us.

"The administration separates the political prisoners into tiny, isolated groups. Some of us were suddenly kidnapped away inside the prison, taken to secret torture chambers and subjected to physical torment leaving permanent traces on their bodies. The prisoners are stripped naked and thrown into dark cells where they stay for months on end without beds or covers, without medical treatment, with no food but a small daily hunk of bread and a little water. Our families are harassed and persecuted...

The prisoners demands included the abolition of all forms of torture inside the prison; the rights to association with their comrades, visits from family and lawyers, the right to reading matter and cultural activity, adequate medical treatment, the right to send and recieve mail, and the right to better food and clothing.

In a December 15 press conference in Paris, Saida's brother Azziz Menebhi, himself a leader of page A/Januaru 1978/What She Wants.

the outlawed Moroccan Students' Association, related how the police who delivered Salda's body to her family told them that the funeral ceremony had to be limited to one hundred people. The day of the burial the police blocked off the entire neighborhood of the city of Marrakech where the family lives.

The family's home was searched three times, and family members were subjected to harsh interrogation by the police who wanted to find out how the news of Saida's death had spread so rapidly. In protest of the treatment of political prisoners, their families staged a hunger strike in a Marrakech mosque where they took refuge.

"My sister died for her ideas," Azziz told the Paris press conference, "but in a sense she is not dead. Her struggle continues through others who will continue to fight for a just society, a society without repression.

WEST GERMANY

(Her Say)--Ingrid Schubert on November 12 became the fourth woman among the 94 young Germans imprisoned for alleged terrorism in West Germany to die under mysterious circumstances •while in jail.

Two other women, Gudrun Ensslin and Ulrike Meinhof, allegedly committed suicide in their cells in separate incidents over the last two years. A third, Katherina Hammersmith, died of cancer after prison authorities delayed acting on her requests for medical attention.

Prison officials claimed that Schubert, who was serving a 13-year jail sentence for a conviction of aiding fugitives, hanged herself in her cell at Stadelheim Prison in Bavaria. A spokesperson for the Bayarian Ministry of Justice, which performed the post-

mortem on Schubert, described her death as "A typical case of suicide by hanging.

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The West German government, meanwhile, is investigating at least 500 individuals on suspicion of terrorism and related activities.

URUGUAY

(HerSay) Amnesty International, the London-based human rights organization, has called upon the Government of Uruguay to establish an independent commission of inquiry into the recent death in military custody of 52-year-old Miriam de Suarez Netto.

The Nobel Prize-winning group says that Suarez Netto, the widow of a Uruguayan member of Parliament, was reportedly held for several months in a Naval Military unit in Montevideo before she died as a result of maltreatment.

In a cable sent to President Aparicio Mendez, Amnesty urges the Uruguayan Government to Investigate publicly the circumstances behind the death of Suarez Netto.

The anti-torture group has also asked the government to clarify the legal and physical situation of 14 Uruguayan citizens, five of them women, who were arrested in early December and have since been held in secret detention.

Amnesty International says that one of the 14 has just been located in a military hospital in Montevideo, reportedly suffering from the effects of torture.

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In 1973, Uruguayan generals declared co-dictatorship with the country's President, dissolved the legislature, muzzled the press, outlawed the Communist and Socialist parties, and disbanded the large National Labor Union.

WANROW CASE GOES TO SUPREME COURT

(HerSay) The Washington State Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on March 13th on whether the state felony murder statute Yvonne Wanrow is charged with is constitutional.

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Wanrow, a Native American Washington, faces retrial under that statute for the second degree murder shooting of convicted rapist William Wesler, and first degree assault on David Kelly, Wesler's companion. Wanrow's previous conviction on these charges was overturned by the high high court in 1976, and a new trial ordered.

Under the Washington felony murder law, the prosecution does not have to prove a defendant was intending to kill in order to obtain a conviction. It only has to demonstrate that the accused intended to commit a felony, and that the felony led to someone's death. Prosecutors contend that Wanrow intended to commit a felonious assault because she shot at both Wesler and Kelly,

During her 1973 trial, Wanrow admitted that she shot both Wesler and Kelly, after Wesler broke into her house and tried to attack her and her children. Kelly, who followed Wesler into Wanrow's house, was also accidentally shot, Wanrow contends, while she was attempting to defend herself.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, which is helping with Wanrow's defense, says that prosecutors for the state of Washington have Indicated that if the Supreme Court throws out that murder charge on grounds of constitutionality, they will probably bring another type of murder charge against her.

Wanrow was in a cast at the time of the alleged murder, and says that shooting Wesler was the only way she could have defended herself.