For the “Stop Torture campaign”, Amnesty is concentrating on five cases from Mexico, Nigeria, Uzbekistan, the Phillipines and Morocco.

Vilyana Tsekova, Country Coordinator for Morocco and Western Sahara, joined us for our June meeting and introduced the group to Amnesty’s two current campaigns, “Stop Torture” and “My Body, My Rights”. She explained how these are particularly significant to the campaigning that we do for North Africa.

Ali Aarrass, a Belgian-Moroccan national, was forcibly returned to Morocco from Spain, where he had been caring for his ageing father. The extradition took place despite warnings from us and the UN Human Rights Committee that doing so would put the father-of-one at risk of incommunicado detention, torture and other ill-treatment, and unfair trial.

Ali has been detained in Morocco ever since. For the first 12 days it was reported that Ali was held incommunicado and tortured in a secret detention centre in Temara. He was beaten on the soles of his feet, given electric shocks to his testicles, suspended from his wrists, and burnt with cigarettes.
You can read more about his case and take action by going to:
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/actions/morocco-justice-ali-tortured-securit…

We will be signing cards and writing letters for these cases at the Writeathon in the Friends Meeting House, Worthing Road, Horsham 10-12 Saturday 5th July.

Vilyana is very happy to answer questions. You can email her at: Vilyana.Tsekova@amnesty.org.uk

Keep up to date with events in North Africa by visiting the North Africa Country Coordinators Facebook page. You don’t have to have a Facebook account just go to www.facebook.com/NorthAfricaTeam where you can read the latest news, press releases, actions etc.