(AI translated) Sheikh Banka is a Sahrawi human rights activist who advocates for human rights principles in his homeland. He was born on January 12, 1989, in the city of Asa. From a very young age, he began to engage in human rights activism to support the rights of the Sahrawi people in determining their own fate. He has held the position of chairman of the Sahrawi Human Rights Monitoring Committee in Asa and Zak, and was also elected as a member of the executive board of the CODESA (Collective of Sahrawi Human Rights Defenders in Western Sahara). He also joined the Moroccan Human Rights Association's branch in Asa.

Due to his active human rights work, he has been arrested several times. On March 2006, when he was still a minor, he was detained and spent six months in the Enzkan prison in Morocco. In October 2006, he was arrested again and sentenced to six months of imprisonment in the Khlal Eïn prison in occupied Western Sahara. On November 8, 2010, after a military attack on the Akdim Izik camp near the city of El Aaiun in Western Sahara, he was arrested by the Moroccan Royal Gendarmerie.

During his periods of imprisonment, he suffered human rights violations, including torture. He appeared before a Moroccan military court in Salé in 2013 and a civil court in the same city in 2017; both trials were deemed lacking the conditions of a fair trial by international organizations such as Front Line, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch.

After being sentenced to an unjust 30-year imprisonment, he was transferred between several Moroccan prisons, including Salé 1, Salé 2, Al Arjat 1, Tafillet 2, and the Central Prison of Kenitra. He is currently detained in the Bouzakarn prison, all of which are located outside the territory of Western Sahara.

Due to the degrading treatment he endured during his interrogations and imprisonment, he went on several hunger strikes, one of which lasted for 19 days. He currently suffers from various chronic illnesses, including asthma, poor eyesight, and hemorrhoids. Despite these obstacles and hardships, this Sahrawi political prisoner, Sheikh Banka, continued his education and obtained a master’s degree in political science and international relations in 2022.