The Western Saharan activist Aminatou Haidar was allowed return to Western Sahara on Thursday, ending a 32-day hunger strike in protest at her expulsion from her homeland by Morocco.

"This is a triumph for international law, for human rights, for international justice and for the cause [of Western Sahara]," she told reporters.

Western Sahara is known as 'Africa's last colony', and has been occupied by neighbouring Morocco since 1976, when the former colonial power, Spain, withdrew.

Haidar is Western Sahara's best-known human rights campaigner, and in October, she had travelled to the US to receive the Civil Courage Prize. On her return to Western Sahara, last month, she was refused entry at the airport of the territory's capital, Laayoune, and was subsequently deported on a flight to Lanzarote.

Haidar had written her nationality as "Western Saharan" on her landing card at the airport. Moroccan authorities said she had renounced her citizenship and confiscated her passport, before expelling her.

On arrival at Lanzarote, Haidar refused to leave the airport and started a hunger strike.

Haidar had previously been imprisoned twice by the Moroccan authorities for agitating for human rights and Western Saharan self-determination. She spent most of a four-year imprisonment in the late 1980s blindfolded, leaving her with permanent problems with her eyes. Arrested again in 2005, she went on hunger strike for 51 days, leaving her with internal damage.

In Lanzarote, she was asked by reporters if she had considered that her protest might result in her children being left without a mother. "Between my children and my dignity I prefer my dignity," she said. "They will live without a mother but with dignity."

In the event, that wasn't necessary. Amidst mounting international pressure, and a growing popular campaign in Spain, where celebrities such as the actor Javier Bardem and filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar had denounced Spain's "complicity" in Haidar's expulsion, Morocco dropped its demand that Haidar apologise to the Moroccan king, Mohammed VI, before being allowed return.

Morocco's u-turn came following negotiations with France and Spain on Thursday afternoon. Both countries released agreed statements recognising that Moroccan law applied in Western Sahara, though the statements stopped short of recognising Moroccan sovereignty.

Morocco claims that Western Sahara is historically part of its territory. But the United Nations court, the International Court of Justice, ruled in 1976 that Western Sahara was entitled to self-determination, a position that Ireland backs.

In recent months, Morocco has taken a new hard line against dissenters. "You are either a patriot or a traitor," said King Mohammed VI in a recent speech. Haidar's return will be seen as a victory for those who consider themselves patriots of Western Sahara, not Morocco.