TORTURE VICTIM TO BE DEPORTED INTO TORTURER'S ARMS

San Francisco/Morocco/Western Sahara

Mostafa was born in Casablanca, Morocco into a politically active family. While still in high school in 1976 he joined the National Union of Moroccan Students, better known by its French name, L’Union Nationale des Estudiants du Maroc(UNEM). Western Saharan independence is one cause that UNEM supports.

On vacation from college in northern France in June of 1979, Mostafa helped distribute pamphlets at a high school announcing a demonstration. He was in possession of some of the pamphlets and his UNEM membership card when he was arrested, interrogated, tortured and confined in a “black prison”, which the UN Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations call one of the worst prisons in the world.

Mostafa was one of the “disappeared” during his incarceration. The police told his family that he was not incarcerated.

The plainclothes officers questioned Mostafa for a while, after which he was brought to a cell in the basement. Passing other cells he heard people moaning. He soon joined the chorus. Behind a metal door, the windowless cell was approximately twenty feet by twenty feet with a metal desk, a chair, a cabinet, and a concrete bench. There were metal hooks on the wall and a freestanding pair of uneven bars similar to those used in gymnastics. There was a water faucet and a foul smelling drainage hole for a toilet.

Shortly after Mostafa was placed in the cell, one of the officers entered and took off his jacket. The officer’s shirtsleeves were rolled up as he began the interrogation anew. From then on the questioning was accompanied by physical torture. The torture began with a punch in the face and became worse as the questioning continued and Mostafa refused to answer the questions or said, “I don’t know”.

On the first day, he was told to lie down on the concrete bench and his feet were cuffed to the metal hooks above him on the wall. The soles of his feet were beat with a wooden stick. Next, he was forced to strip. Face down, his feet were cuffed to the low parallel bar and his hands were cuffed to the higher bar. He was then beat with a wooden stick from head to foot until the entire backside of his body was bleeding.

While still cuffed to the parallel bars, he was told that if he wasn’t going to talk, then he would be quiet, i.e. not join the chorus of moans coming from other cells. His tormentor then soaked a towel in a bucket of bleach and pushed into Mostafa’s mouth. The torturer then left the room and came back a short time later to ask more questions. The towel was replaced each time Mostafa refused to answer. The process was repeated frequently over the course of hours. In documents filed in federal court to support his petition for asylum, Mostafa states, “…the bleach flames burned my eyes and made it almost impossible to breathe”. The torturer eventually stopped putting the towel in his mouth and left Mostafa hanging for about an hour. After that, he was uncuffed and left alone in the cell for the night.

The next morning, the same tormentor gave him a cup of tea and a piece of bread, which became standard fare for his ration per day. After he ate, the interrogation began anew, along with the beating and a new torture method. Electric shock was added to the other forms of torture. While cuffed to the parallel bars he was again beaten from head to foot.

When Mostafa still would not answer his questions, the torturer took out a metal box with wires and proceeded to shock him over every part of his body, including his genitals. Mostafa says that he still remembers the pain and describes it, “…as though I had nails being pushed through my veins, reaching every part of my body.” Every time he refused to talk, the voltage was increased. Being handcuffed to metal bars may have maximized the effect and Mostafa believes the process permanently injured him.

The full range of torture was employed for three days, after which it was replaced by a form of psychological torture. The beatings, with and without hanging over the bars, and the bleach towel continued throughout six of the eight days he was kept at Derb Moulay Cherif. Moustafa was weak from lack of food, the torture and lack of medical care. On the seventh day he was taken to the infirmary and offered treatment if he answered their questions. He refused and was brought back to the cell without treatment. After eight days he was released and told that they knew where he was and would see him again.

Mostafa was accepted at the University of Montreal, Canada, received a student visa from the Canadian Embassy, and left Casablanca at the end of December 1979. He has not returned since because something happened to one of his college friends who went home to visit during spring break of 1983. His friend disappeared and hasn’t been seen since. Both Mostafa and his friend were members of the National Union of Moroccan Students at the University of Montreal.

Mostafa learned of his friend’s disappearance while visiting New York City. Because there were students loyal to King Mohammed VI at the University of Montreal. He feared that he could also disappear, regardless of where he was, including U of Montreal. He recalled the police telling him that they knew where he was and that they would see him again.

Mostafa got a job and a place to work in New York. Unfortunately Mostafa then found one of the many shysters who prey on immigrants. The man got him a driver’s license for eighty dollars but disappeared with additional money paid for him to process Mostafa’s application for amnesty.

Mostafa has been in the US ever since, holding down a full time job and maintaining a residence without being arrested until INS arrested him earlier this year. Most of his friends didn’t know where he was. He didn’t talk about his past or his future, neither of which are rosy.

After eight months of incarceration by the INS, Mostafa obtained an attorney and was released. He faces a further hearing in the spring. Racial profiling may play a part in deporting him into the hands of his tormentors. The situation in Morocco has worsened in the recent months.

King Mohammed VI’s government is a mock democracy in which no one is elected to office without his personal approval. He considers himself to be above God and requires all Muslims to put his name before Allah in all their prayers. His government has ignored the international community. A UN “peacekeeping” mission (MINURSO) has done nothing but stand by and watch the beatings, arrests and home invasions on the streets. The mission members representing the UN Human Rights Commission have verified gross abuses of human rights by Moroccan secret police since at least 1991 when MINURSO started it’s mission. The situation remains the same as it did when Mostafa left his home on his journey to the promised land.

On December 14, 2006, the Sahrawi Press Service (SPS) reported that thirty-nine (39) Sahrawi and Moroccan students were wounded during confrontations with Moroccan authorities in Marrakech (Morocco). Some Moroccan students under orders from the secret services were active participants. On December 12, Sahrawi students who were organizing a peaceful sit-in in solidarity with the Sahrawi victims of Moroccan repression in the occupied Sahrawi cities of El Aaiun and Smarna were attacked.

The Sahrawi Association of the Victims of the Flagrant Human Rights Violations Committed by the Moroccan State (ASVDH) "energetically" denounced tortures perpetrated by the Moroccan forces of occupation in the occupied cities of Smara and El Aaiun.

On December 10 the ASVDH organized a sit-in to commemorate the International Day of Human Rights (December 10). But the Moroccan forces violently repressed this sit-in and used excessive force against the demonstrators. Demonstrators injured and arrested included Brahim DAHANE, President of ASVDH Elghalia DJIMI, Vice President of ASVDH, and Mohamed Saleh DAILLAL a member of ASVDH, as well as Hmad HAMMAD, human rights activist and one time political prisoner.


Elghalia Djimi, a 45 year old mother of five children and a member of the Committee of the Families of the Sahrawi Disappeareds, was a victim of forced disappearance from 1987 to 1991. Her personal observations of the confrontation in El Aaiun(sometimes spelled El-Ayoune), pictures of recent torture victims, and related stories are available at: http://www.wsahara.net/news.html


A Sahrawi youngster, Almoussaoui Mohamed Embarek Alladi Ould Haddi,
testified to ASVDH that the Moroccan police put his head in a bag and
tortured him publicly in the street.

Sahrawi political prisoners, Toubali el Hafed, ElGasmi Mohamed, Ahmeidatt Ahmed Salem and Loumadi Abdessalam were tortured during their transfer from the Moroccan colonial court to their cell in the Carcel negra in the occupied city of El Aaiun. As they have been doing since 1991, ASVDH reported the crimes against humanity to the UN Mission there (MINURSO) and to representatives of the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC). In 2006, Amnesty International (AI) reported that Moroccan police beat a Sahrawi independence demonstrator to death.

Foreign journalists are constantly being expelled from Morocco for attempting to enter Western Sahara, but a small group of Independent News journalists have been able to verify the United Nations impotence in Morocco and Western Sahara. All reports from MINURSO, UNHRC, AI and several other human rights groups have found gross violations involving excessive force to disperse demonstrations or effect arrest, “rendition” aka disappearing, torture and unfair and unjust courts. The “right of self-determination” by the Sahrawi, and the “right of return” of the refugees stuck in camps in Algeria are constantly addressed but aren’t being dealt with by any international groups.

In a speech to commemorate International Human Rights Day, outgoing United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that the UN Human Rights Commission was a failure. The Secretary-General pointed out the need for an agency that will have recourse to international courts and other legal institutions, and use them. A full video of the speech is available at http://www.hrw.org/video/2006/annan/ His December 8 speech contains several surprising conclusions, but nowhere is the proof of the failure of a UN peacekeeping mission (MINURSO) or UNHRC more evident than in Western Sahara and Morocco.