Malika Senhadji: my father died under torture

Malika Senhadji, daughter of Mohamed Senhadji, a victim of past human rights violations, said she was shocked by the death of her father who perished under torture in the Gendarmerie Royale station in Figuig, two days after his arrest following March 1973 events.

In her testimony, here Saturday, during the third session of public hearings into past human rights violations (committed from 1956 to 1999), organized by the Justice and Reconciliation Commission (IER), Senhadji said she "was forced to live away from her family while she was only 5 years old." Her mother, she said, became widow at the age of 24 and had to take care of three children without any support.

she died without ever being informed about the real circumstances of her husband's arrest and death, deplored Malika Senhadji. She pointed out that Aissa Ahmed, a witness arrested arbitrarily part of the case, saw Mohamed Senhadji die. She went on that her father was buried but his family was informed only two days later by the Gendarmerie Royale that said "he died a natural death."

Senhadji said it is hard for her to remember all the sorrows and hardships she and her family had to go through, explaining that her "aim is not to revenge her father's death, but to overcome the hardships of the past that she would never forget."