Algiers: Western Sahara independence movement Polisario Front elected a founding member of the group as its new leader on Saturday, Algeria’s APS news agency said, after its head of 40 years died in late May.
Ebrahim Gali – who represented the Algeria-backed movement in Madrid then in Algiers – is to succeed Mohammad Abdul Aziz, who spent decades fighting Morocco for the independence of the territory.
The 67-year-old – the sole candidate in the vote – was elected by an “overwhelming majority” to become Polisario secretary general and president of the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arabic Democratic Republic, APS said.
Around 2,300 delegates elected Gali after they gathered for an extraordinary conference in the Sahrawi refugee camp of Dakhla near Tindouf, 1,800 kilometres southwest of Algiers, it said.
Abdul Aziz had led the Polisario since 1976, three years after the group was founded to struggle for independence for the territory, which Morocco annexed in 1975.
Local Sahrawi people are campaigning for the right to self-determination, but Morocco considers the territory to be part of the kingdom and insists its sovereignty cannot be challenged.
The president of the Sahrawi National Council, Khatri Addouh, had led the group in the interim after Abdul Aziz’s death.