Shedding light on 1956-59 events will help avoid violations repetition, former detainee relative
Morocco, Politics, 5/5/2005

M'Hammed M'Rabet called for shedding light on the events that took place in the Northern Rif region between 1956 and 1958 to avoid human rights violations to occur again.

M'Rabet, brother of former detainee Haddou Aqchich companion of Moroccan militant Abdelkarim Al Khattabi, recounted, at the 7th public hearing on human rights violations held Tuesday in the northern town of Al Hoceima, how his brother was arrested by Spanish authorities when he came back from a mission at a military college in Iraq and by the Moroccan military one week after his release by the Spanish.

He told his father was forced to run away in the morrow of the 1958 events after vainly seeking his son Haddou, who never came back. His father was afterwards sentenced to life imprisonment, M'Rabet said.

Ten people took the floor at the hearing organised by the Justice and Reconciliation Commission (IER), set up in January 2004 to shed light on the human rights violations between 1956 to 1999, to talk of the ordeals inflicted to them or their relatives during the 1956-59 events and the 1984 tensions. As to Omar Al Abdallaoui, arrested in 1957, he spoke of the torture he was inflicted and the places he was detained in, recalling that he learned afterwards that one of the places was a house that belonged to Mohamed ben Abdelkarim Khattabi.

Abdellaoui, 66, who was member of the "parti de la Choura et de l'Istiqlal" (PDI), said he was arrested twice before his release in 1959 along with several companions.

Ahmed Ben Seddik, born in 1946, recounted the mistreatment he was inflicted as a boy by a soldier who threatened either to kill or rape him in 1956, and how his father and grandfather were tortured after their arrest at the time. Ahmed affirmed he did not recognize his father, when visiting his relatives, because of the mistreatment he suffered.

He added his father and grandfather were mujahidines who fought for their homeland and religion, asking to live in freedom now and in the assurance violations will not take place again to secure better future to younger generations.

For her part, Mme Fama Addoul, widow of Abdessalam Attaoud, missing in the first year of independence, she wished to retrieve the remains of her husband, for she said she would be able to visit with her husband's grave, like any bereaved wife.

She told of her sufferings after her husband was kidnapped in June 1956, along with his companion Brahim El Ouazzani, and her attempts to find to no avail her husband.

The IER began holding public hearings on past human rights violations last December, starting in Rabat and then in 2005 in Figuig and Errachidia (South-East), Khenifra (center) and Marrakech (central South).

Previous Stories:
  Moroccan journalists 'deliberately' targeted, Press Union   (5/4/2005)
  European parliament hails Morocco's efforts in human rights   (4/29/2005)
  Reconciliation commission 'courageous and daring step' to step up democracy, French Senators   (4/28/2005)

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