Saleh Saadallah reports various forms of mistreatment

Former detainee Saleh Saadallah, a victim of past human abuses in Morocco, devoted his testimony, at the second public hearing Wednesday, by the Justice and Reconciliation Commission (IER), to the abuses and mistreatments he underwent at the time of his detention in 1963 at the police station of Maarif, Derb Moulay Chrif, in Casablanca.

Saâdallah first evoked the arrests which occurred in 1952 after the events that took place following the assassination of Farhat Hachad before testifying on his arrest on July 16, 1963 by security forces at the headquarters of the UNFP party during a meeting chaired by Abderrahim Bouabid and Abderrahmane Youssoufi. He said he was taken along with other members of the party, blindfolded and handcuffed to the police station of Maârif where he spent 28 days. He was then transferred to Derb Moulay Chrif where he spent 5 days before being released without lawsuit. Saâdallah added that another group among his colleagues were taken to court. The causes of his arrest in company of his colleagues were purely political as they were related to his activity within the UNFP, he said.

This political formation was hostile to the Constitution of that time, he explained before affirming to have endured, in these two centers, the worst sufferings inflicted under inhuman conditions, while being subjected to various forms of physical and psychic torture.

Saâdallah evoked the circumstances which surrounded the events known as of "Cheikh Al Arab" which made several victims, the disappearance in France of Mehdi Ben Barka and the events of Casablanca.

He was arrested at night in 1972 in Guelmim, while attending a meeting of activists. However, he explained, his real sufferings, began on March 19, 1973 when he was stopped by the police, which searched his residence without arrest warrant.

In the detention center of Derb Moulay Chrif, the former detainee affirmed to have undergone worst tortures with electrode means fixed on his lips and ears. He affirmed on several occasions being a political activist and trade-unionist as well as a member of the Association of Support to the Palestinian People fight.

He was transferred thereafter to Gourbi at the airport of Anfa in Casablanca where he spent eleven months in company of his colleagues under extremely painful conditions and where each prisoner had to squeeze in a space of 25 cm, let alone malnutrition and hunger. After eleven months of detention in Gourbi, he was transferred to the Ghbila prison, then to the penitentiary of Ain Borja while waiting for the verdict of the court of appeal which discharged him on April 19, 1977.

Saâdallah also spoke of the various physical, psychological and moral forms of torture he underwent during the interrogations and during his detention, quoting inter alia, "la bouteille," (the bottle) "la Falaqa" and the fixing of electrodes in lips.