Former detainee Melkaoui: I was jailed 10 years because I loved my country

Former detainee, Alla Melkaoui, said Wednesday at the 4th session of hearings into past human rights violations (committed from 1956 to 1999), that he was condemned to ten years in jail because he loved his country and wished it would advance in terms of democracy and prosperity.

Melkaoui described as a "masquerade" his condemnation for conspiring against the regime and undermining the interior security of the State, noting that sentences ranging from 5 years to life imprisonment have touched even some retarded persons.

Melkaoui underlined at the hearing, organized by the Justice and Reconciliation Commission (IER), that he was arrested in 1976 in Tinjdad after security forces searched his house where several books were seized. For 4 months, he shared with other inmates a 2m-long cell at a police station in Fez.

The former detainee described the ordeal he lived in that cell before his transfer to the secret detention center of 'Derb Moulay Cherif' in Casablanca, where he was watched all the time and banned from talking to other inmates.

After his condemnation, Melkaoui said he was transferred to the central prison of Kenitra (near Rabat) where he was beaten with three other inmates by 150 guards because they were singing.

Melkaoui said his oppression and suffering persisted even after his release as he was banned from visiting his brother who lives in another city. Police kept him in detention for a whole day under the pretext that he did not ask for authorization to leave the city.

The former detainee considers the public hearing sessions a first step towards the truth.