The Temara interrogation center, also known as Temara secret detention center (), is an

extrajudicial Extrajudicial punishment is a punishment for an alleged crime or offense which is carried out without legal process or supervision by a court or tribunal through a legal proceeding. Politically motivated Extrajudicial punishment is often a fe ...

detainment and secret prison facility of

Morocco Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to Algeria–Morocc ...

located within a forested area of

Rabat Rabat (, also , ; ) is the Capital (political), capital city of Morocco and the List of cities in Morocco, country's seventh-largest city with an urban population of approximately 580,000 (2014) and a metropolitan population of over 1.2 million. ...

, Morocco. It is operated by the Directorate for the Surveillance of the Territory (Direction de la surveillance du territoire, DST), 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.

History

The first known detainee was Mohammed Mossadegh Benkhadra (), in 1985 and spent 8 years in

detainment and without trial. And later when he was released 1993, he wrote the book "Tazmara 234", contraction from words

Temara Temara () is a coastal city in Morocco. It is located in the region of Rabat-Salé-Kénitra, directly south of Rabat on the Atlantic coast, in the suburban area of the capital. The city with 313,510 inhabitants as of 2014 is the capital of Skhir ...

and

Tazmamart 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 Errachid ...

another popular prison and as a sign of continued abuse from the

Years of Lead (Morocco) 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. Timeframe Hassan II was king ...

to present days. More recently, Zakaria Moumni claimed to have been tortured there when he was arrested in 2010.

CIA black site

The

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American not-for-profit organization, not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are dist ...

reported in August 2010 that, according to several current and former American officials, the US government possesses video and audio recordings of Ramzi Binalshibh, an accused plotter of the

September 11, 2001 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

being interrogated in a secret prison. The US officials told the AP that the prison was run by Moroccans but largely financed by the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

, which in late 2002 handed Binalshibh over to Moroccan custody and kept him there for five months. The Moroccan government has never acknowledged the facility's existence, despite allegations by freed Guantanamo detainee

Binyam Mohamed Binyam Ahmed Mohamed (, , born 24 July 1978), also referred to as Benjamin Mohammed, Benyam Mohammed or Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi, is an Ethiopian national and United Kingdom resident, who was detained as a suspected enemy combatant by the US Go ...

Temara interrogation centre and others that the CIA relied on Morocco as a secret proxy detention site during the period after September 11, 2001.

Torture of detainees

Members of the DST are not considered to be part of the judicial police and as such should not arrest and hold suspects. Frequently reported methods of torture include beatings, the suspension of the body in contorted positions, and the threat of

rape Rape is a type of sexual assault involving sexual intercourse, or other forms of sexual penetration, carried out against a person without consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or against a person ...

or other

sexual abuse Sexual abuse or sex abuse is abusive sexual behavior by one person upon another. It is often perpetrated using physical force, or by taking advantage of another. It often consists of a persistent pattern of sexual assaults. The offender is re ...

of the detainees. Other reported methods include rape by the forced insertion of objects such as bottles into the

anus In mammals, invertebrates and most fish, the anus (: anuses or ani; from Latin, 'ring' or 'circle') is the external body orifice at the ''exit'' end of the digestive tract (bowel), i.e. the opposite end from the mouth. Its function is to facil ...

sleep deprivation Sleep deprivation, also known as sleep insufficiency or sleeplessness, is the condition of not having adequate duration and/or quality of sleep to support decent alertness, performance, and health. It can be either Chronic (medicine), chronic ...

cigarette burns Cigarette burns are usually deliberate injuries caused by pressing a lit cigarette or cigar to the skin. They are a common form of child abuse, self-harm, and torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a p ...

, and the application of live electrodes to the body. Several

non-government organizations A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an independent, typically nonprofit organization that operates outside government control, though it may get a significant percentage of its funding from government or corporate sources. NGOs often focus ...

such as

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members a ...

and

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Headquartered in New York City, the group investigates and reports on issues including War crime, war crimes, crim ...

have denounced reports of torture at the facility.

References

{{Human rights in Morocco Political history of Morocco Political repression Human rights abuses in Morocco Torture in Morocco Black sites Prisons in Morocco

History

CIA black site

Torture of detainees

See also

References