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Ali Bourequat is a successful Moroccan/Tunisian businessman who was secretly arrested and incarcerated for years by the Moroccan government in the infamous secret prison Tazmamart. [1] He is a French citizen now living in the United States. He is the son of an Alaouite princess who worked in the royal court. He wrote a book on his ordeal.
Bourequat is the son of an Alaouite princess and a Turkish-Tunisian businessman [2] who was also a security chief and helped found Morocco's police and Intelligence service. His father was also a close friend of Mohammed V and so Ali and his brothers grew up in the inner circle of the court of King Hassan II. [1]
In 1973 he was, with his two brothers Midhat and Bayazid, abducted by the Moroccan secret police, tortured and jailed without trial for reasons he claims unknown even to himself.
He was originally incarcerated in facilities close to Rabat and in 1973 succeeded in escaping along with the mutineers of the 1971 failed coup but was recaptured several days later. In 1981 he was transferred to the Tazmamart prison, a secret detention facility with a 50% death rate. [3] [4] His family was given no information on his whereabouts, consistent with the practice of the Moroccan regime in cases of "forced disappearance", and he was never charged with a crime. [5]
In 1991 he was released after pressure from human rights organization Amnesty International and the American government, along with other surviving Tazmamart prisoners, including his brothers, on the condition that he leave for France never to return.
The French government had consistently cooperated with Morocco in denying his imprisonment,[ citation needed ] and Bourequat was scalding in his critique of Paris's collaboration with the Moroccan government. While writing about his experiences and about the close ties between the Moroccan government and the French government, Bourequat stated he was threatened and harassed by both Moroccan and French secret police. He fled to the United States, where he was in 1995 granted asylum as the only American refugee from France.
He presently lives in Hendersonville, North Carolina (USA) where he remains a vocal critic of the Moroccan regime.
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, commonly known as Ben Ali or Ezzine, was a Tunisian politician who served as the 2nd president of Tunisia from 1987 to 2011. In that year, during the Tunisian revolution, he fled to Saudi Arabia.
Tazmamart was a secret prison in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, holding political prisoners. The prison became a symbol of oppression in the political history of contemporary Morocco. It is located near the city of Er-Rich, between Errachida and Midelt. It was managed by commandant Feddoul and Hamidou Laanigri, both Royal Moroccan Gendarmerie officials.
Malika Oufkir is a Moroccan Berber writer and former "disappeared". She is the daughter of General Mohamed Oufkir and a cousin of fellow Moroccan writer and actress Leila Shenna.
Ahmed Dlimi was a Moroccan General under the rule of Hassan II. After General Mohamed Oufkir's 1972 assassination, he became Hassan II's right-hand man. He led the Western Sahara War and played a major role in Angolan Civil War. He was promoted to General during the Green March in 1975, and took charge of the Moroccan Armed Forces in the Southern Zone, where the military were fighting the Polisario Front.
Christine Daure-Serfaty was a French human rights activist and writer who distinguished herself in Morocco where she embraced the fight of the victims of King Hassan II, during the "Years of Lead," and from afar, played a major role in the evolution of the regime and the human rights in Morocco. She was the wife of Abraham Serfaty, a Moroccan dissident. In 1974 Abraham Serfaty was sentenced to life imprisonment. It was in September 1999 that the new Moroccan king, Mohammed VI, permitted Abraham Serfaty’s return to Morocco.
Brahim Dahane is a Sahrawi human rights activist and president of the Sahrawi Association of Victims of Grave Human Rights Violations Committed by the Moroccan State.
Ahmed Marzouki is a former military Moroccan officer who was forcibly disappeared after the failed coup attempt of 1971.
The Years of Lead was a period of the rule of King Hassan II of Morocco, from roughly the 1960s through the 1980s, marked by state violence and repression against political dissidents and democracy activists.
In the 1990s in Morocco gradual political reforms culminated in the constitutional reform of 1996, which created a new bicameral legislature with expanded, although still limited, powers. Although reportedly marred by irregularities, elections for the Chamber of Representatives were held in 1997. With the death of King Hassan II of Morocco in 1999, the more liberal-minded Crown Prince Sidi Mohammed, who assumed the title of Mohammed VI, took the throne. He has since enacted successive reforms to modernize Morocco, and the country has seen a marked improvement in its human rights record. One of the new king's first acts was to free some 8,000 political prisoners and reduce the sentences of another 30,000. He also established a commission to compensate families of missing political activists and others subjected to arbitrary detention.
In its modern history, Tunisia is a sovereign republic, officially called the Republic of Tunisia. Tunisia has over ten million citizens, almost all of Arab-Berber descent. The Mediterranean Sea is to the north and east, Libya to the southeast, and Algeria to the west. Tunis is the capital and the largest city ; it is located near the ancient site of the city of Carthage.
Hüseyin Baybaşin is a Kurdish drug trafficker. He is currently serving life sentence in the Netherlands convicted of murder, drug smuggling and other charges.
Sakher El Materi is a Tunisian businessman. He is the son-in-law of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was President of Tunisia until 2011. In 2010, Materi's company Princesse El-Materi Holdings was operating in six industry sectors: News and Media, Banking and Financial Services, Automotive, Shipping and Cruises, Real Estate and Agriculture. A member of the ruling Constitutional Democratic Rally, he was elected as a Member of the Chamber of Deputies of Tunisia for the constituency of Tunis on 25 October 2009. He was struck off by the party after the 2011 Tunisian Revolution. After the revolution El Materi fled the country and went to the Seychelles.
Mehdi Ben Barka was a Moroccan nationalist, politician, revolutionary, head of the left-wing National Union of Popular Forces (UNFP) and secretary of the Tricontinental Conference. An opponent of French Imperialism and King Hassan II, he was "disappeared" in Paris in 1965. Many theories attempting to explain what happened to him were put forward over the years; but it was not until 2018 that details of his disappearance were established by Israeli journalist and author Ronen Bergman in his book Rise And Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations. Based on research and interviews with Israeli intelligence operatives who were involved in planning the kidnapping of Barka, Bergman concluded that he was murdered by Moroccan agents and French police, who also disposed of his body.
The Kingdom of Tunisia was a short-lived country established as a monarchy on 20 March 1956 after Tunisian independence and the end of the French protectorate period. It appeared for a period of one year and five months between 20 March 1956, the day of the independence, until 25 July 1957, the day of the declaration of the republic. Bey of Tunis, Muhammad VIII al-Amin with his Prime Minister, Habib Bourguiba.
The Temara interrogation center, also known as Temara secret detention center, is an extrajudicial detainment and secret prison facility of Morocco located within a forested area of Rabat, Morocco. It is operated by the Directorate for the Surveillance of the Territory, a Moroccan domestic intelligence agency implicated in past and ongoing human rights violations, which continues to arrest, detain and interrogate individuals suspected of involvement in terrorism-related activities outside of the Moroccan legal framework.
The issue of human rights in Tunisia, is complex, contradictory, and, in some regards, confusing in the wake of the Tunisian revolution that began in January 2011 and overthrew the longstanding dictatorship of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. While the immediate months after the revolution were characterized by significant improvements in the status of human rights, some of those advances have since been reversed. The situation remains in a state of flux, with different observers providing virtually irreconcilable accounts of the current status of human rights in that country.
Moncef El Materi is a Tunisian businessman and former commanding officer of the artillery of Tunisia. He established Al Adwya, one of Tunisia's biggest private pharmaceutical companies, with his brother Tahar El Materi in the 1970s.
Abdellatif Hammouchi is the head of the Moroccan national police directorate, the General Directorate for National Security or DGST as well as head of secret services, the General Directorate for Territorial Surveillance or DGST.
The General Directorate for Territorial Surveillance, is the internal intelligence agency of the Moroccan state. It is tasked with the monitoring of potentially subversive domestic activities.
Their father was a French-Tunisian national of Turkish descent, who left Tunisia for Morocco.
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