Teacher victim of torture in 80s: I preferred torture to hearing my students moan
Morocco, Politics, 2/8/2005

Abedlkader Souidi, a teacher from the Middle Atlas city of Azrou who was arrested in 1984 and tortured together with a group of student who went on strike to claim heating in the high school, said during his detention he preferred to be tortured than hear his students moan as a result of the sufferings they were inflicted.

Souidi, who was making a testimony in the 5th public hearings session held by the justice and reconciliation commission (IER), set up last January to seek out-of-court settlement of past human rights abuses, said he and his students were arrested after the Tarik Ibn Zyad high school students in Azrou went on strike to claim heating.

He recounted that the school soon turned into military barracks. As a result, he went on, 100 students, aged below 18, were arrested and transferred to the neighbouring city of Ifrane where they were inflicted the worst forms of torture.

He recalled how the wave of arrests concerned members of the former communist party (Party for Progress and Socialism/PPS) and members of the leftist Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP).

He also related how he was arrested on Feb.2, 1984 after security forces circled his house and searched in his documents and books, before taking him, blindfolded, in a secret detention location in Ifrane.

Among those arrested, he went on, 18 high school students and PPS members in Azrou, as well as other individuals, were held in detention. Torture started around 11.00 pm and continued until 4.00 am, and prisoners were taken to a courtyard where they spent the rest of the night outdoors in below zero temperatures, he recollects.

Souidi also narrated that during questioning, the group was successively accused of posting on the high school walls leaflets calling for strike, before they were reproached publishing literature denouncing the squandering of forest riches of the region, accused of supporting the PPS stance on the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.

In the first instance court of Meknes, the students were condemned to six months in prison while the PPS members got 3 years. Eventually, at the appeal trial, all of the group members were sentenced to 5 years in jail, which they spent in Ifrane and in Meknes.

The former teacher, who was fired after his release, said the Azrou group arrest was actually a settlement of accounts against leftist forces and called the state to apologize to all the militants who suffered during this period and who continue to suffer from various diseases.

Most of the Azrou group members either died or went insane, he said, praising, however, as "pioneer" the manner chosen by Morocco to settle the issue of past human rights violations.

Previous Stories:
  Fifth session of public hearings into human rights violations this Sunday in Khenifra   (2/7/2005)
  Amnesty International welcomes Morocco's draft law on torture   (2/7/2005)
  Sahrawi human rights advocacy association protests Reporters sans frontieres release   (2/7/2005)

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