Mahfoud Ali Beiba

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Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic
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Mahfoud Ali Beiba is a Sahrawi nationalist politician and a member of the Polisario Front, an organisation that seeks the independence of Western Sahara. Since 1975, he has lived in exile in the refugee camps of Tindouf, Algeria.

Beiba briefly served as Polisario's Secretary-General, the movement's top post, starting on June 9, 1976. He had constitutionally succeeded the organization's first leader, El-Ouali Mustapha Sayed, who had died in combat in Mauritania. After about two months, a Polisario General Popular Congress (GPC) was convened, and in the elections Beiba was replaced by long-standing Sahrawi leader Mohamed Abdelaziz, who was last re-elected in 2007.

Since then, Beiba has held several high-ranking posts in the Polisario structure and as a minister of the exile government of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), including as Prime Minister in 1982-85. In 1995-99 he again served as Prime Minister but was forced out of office after the exile parliament, the Sahrawi National Council, brought his government down with a vote of no confidence. He was replaced by Bouchraya Hamoudy Beyoune, who appointed him to the post of minister for the occupied territories. Since 2003, Beiba serves as speaker of the SNC, and in this capacity he is also a member of Polisario's executive organ, the National Secretariat.