Sunday, January 23, 2011

Victim tells of ordeal in Tunisia's jails


Savagely beaten after being pushed from an upstairs window by police, a newly released Adem Boukadida talks of a corrupt regime's daily brutality

Peter Beaumont in Tunis
The Observer, Sunday 23 January 2011

"When the guards came to release Adem Boukadida with 20 other men from the white-walled compound of Tunisia's Mornghouia prison, just outside the capital, Tunis, they told him: "Go and get your stuff." That's all.

The 30-year-old graduate of Al-Azhar University, which the old regime of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali regarded with suspicion for its Islamist links, could barely walk.

The stories of men like Boukadida, finally released last Thursday, fuel the continuing anger against those in the interim government who were closely associated with the Ben Ali regime. The stories are of brutality, corruption and everyday cruelty at the hands of his police state. These accounts are at last emerging uncensored on television and radio and in the press.....

Tunisia's new government has said it will pay compensation to prisoners who suffered under the 23-year regime of Ben Ali. But Boukadida is anxious that those who tortured him should be brought to account, which he believes will happen.

"I'm sure those who did this to me will be brought to justice and made to account for their criminal acts."....."

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