In July 1971, the Moroccan army carried out a failed coup against the king in the palace of Skhirat. The following year airmen made a new coup, this time the plane of King Hassan II, on his return from France, was attacked in the air by jet fighters.
In the near future the Amazigh Information Centre will reconstruct this historical event with short articles. We do this on the basis of testimonies from people who have experienced this event, such as the fighter pilot Salah Hachad, books by critical authors such as Gilles Perrault, Stephen Smith and various newspaper articles.
International pressure on sick king
The changes in world politics and the state of health of Hassan II played a role in the closure of Tazmamart.
The year 1989 saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union, with the prospect of the end of the Cold War, which means that the Moroccan regime is no longer able to respond to the conflicting interests of the superpowers: the US and the Soviet Union.
In 1990 the book Notre Ami Le Roi (Our Friend the King) was published by the author Gilles Perrault, who denounces the large-scale human rights violations in Morocco and devotes an entire chapter to Tazmamart entitled: The living dead of Tazmamart.
International human rights organisations bring Tazmamart to the fore, Danielle Mitterrand, the wife of former French President François Mitterrand, chairman of the France Libertés Foundation – the Danielle-Mitterrand Foundation has pleaded with Hassan II for the release of political prisoners in Morocco.
At the beginning of the 1990s, doctors announced to Hassan II that he was suffering from an incurable disease and this was one of the reasons for him to revise his political policy so that his son, the current King Mohamed VI, could follow him without interruption when he dies. In this way he pardoned all his opponents.
More than half of the prisoners dead
More than half of the prisoners of Tazmamart died in the dungeon and were buried in the courtyard without any religious Ritual, their remains were sprinkled with a chemical substance so that no traces remain. The survivors were taken to the Ahermoumou school for cadets in 1991 to have them treated and to erase the visible traces of Tazmamart on their bodies with food and medication.
The prisoners sentenced to 20 years in prison have been returned to the prison from which they were abducted 18 years ago, the Kenitra prison. To add to the suffering, the prison director reads to them the pardon of Hassan II.
Royal grace and threat
Other prisoners sentenced to less than 20 years have served much longer than their sentences, some of them have died in Tazmamart. This explains Colonel Ahmed Dlimi’s words on the day of the Kenitra court ruling: “There is no difference between three years and twenty years in prison, it is all the same“. The trial was just a show trial, the plan for the regime’s revenge on the prisoners.
The executioner of Tazmamart, Colonel Bouchaib Feddoul, warns the survivors on their release in a threatening tone: “Forget everything you saw there [Tazmamart]! We will give you proof of identity, but if you ever reveal anything, we will make you disappear forever“.
Arrest after release
Army officer Ahmed Marzouki was arrested, threatened and intimidated again after his release from Tazmamart after the intelligence service found out that he wanted to publish a book together with a French writer. According to Marzouki, a university lecturer, who works as a supporter for the French writer, has reported him to the Moroccan secret service.
Marzouki was attacked by two people in Brussels in 2010. They beat up Marzouki and insulted him in Arabic. He was in Belgium to give a lecture on the theme of ‘reconciliation’ and human rights in Morocco.
Marzouki is the author of the French bestseller ‘Tazmamart, cellule 10’.
This article will be continued
Source:https://medium.com/@AmazighInformatieCentrum/de-aanslag-op-het-vliegtuig-van-de-koning-van-marokko-1972-deel-14-fa5551ec5cb0
Translated by: Najat M.
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22 Menschen starben bei ihrer Flucht nach Spanien und wurden ins Meer geworfen, so die Überlebenden.
Moroccan migrants disembark from a dinghy at “Del Canuelo” beach after they crossed the Strait of Gibraltar sailing from the coast of Morocco, in Tarifa, sourthern Spain, July 27, 2018. REUTERS/Jon Nazca TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY Migranten, die mit der Fähre Vronskiy transportiert werden, erreichen den Hafen von Motril (Grenada). Auf Video sterben mehr als 20 Migranten in einem Treibboot im Alboranmeer. FERMÍN RODRÍGUEZ | ATLAS
Zweiundzwanzig Menschen, die auf einem Boot nach Spanien reisten, starben auf dem Weg und wurden nach Angaben der Überlebenden ins Meer geworfen, die im Alboranischen Meer von einer Fähre gerettet wurden, die die Strecke zwischen Melilla und Motril zurücklegte. Ein Maritimer Rettungshubschrauber brachte drei Männer mit Symptomen der Unterkühlung und zwei Frauen und ein Mädchen nach Almería, um von den Gesundheitsdiensten betreut zu werden.
Als das Boot abgefangen wurde, reisten 27 Migranten auf ihm, aber Salvamento Marítimo hatte am Dienstag eine Warnung von einer NGO erhalten, dass ein Patera mit 49 Personen auf offenem Meer trieb. Die Überlebenden erzählten der Guardia Civil, dass vom Boot, das von Al Hoceima in Marokko aus gestartet war, die Leichen der Migranten, die während der Reise starben, wurden über Board geworfen. Nach Angaben des Rettungsdienstes wurden heute Nachmittag keine Leichen in der Nähe der Rettung gesehen. Spanien rettet ein Drittel der Migranten auf marokkanischen Gewässern.
Die Fähre Vronskiy fand das Patera diesen Mittwoch um 13.40 Uhr, 11 Seemeilen nördlich von Cape Tres Forcas, in einem Bereich marokkanischer Verantwortung. Die Suche begann am Dienstagnachmittag mit einem Frontex-Flugzeug und einem Luftwaffenflugzeug. Die Aktivistin Helena Maleno, die oft von Migranten, die sich ins Mittelmeer begeben, um Hilfe gebeten wird, hat angeprangert, dass diese Todesfälle das Ergebnis der Migrationspolitik der sozialistischen Regierung sind. “Es gab nicht genug Zusammenarbeit zwischen Spanien und Marokko, um dies zu verhindern”, sagt Maleno. “Wären die Menschen in Not Europäer, wären sie nicht gestorben. Die vom Aktivisten erwähnte Zusammenarbeit ist die seit Anfang dieses Jahres festgelegte Richtlinie zwischen Spanien und Marokko. Seitdem helfen die Rettungsteams der Maritime Rescue Migranten im Such- und Rettungsgebiet Marokkos nicht mehr und delegieren die Hilfsmaßnahmen in den Gewässern ihrer Kompetenz an das Nachbarland. Die Zusammenarbeit und Koordination zwischen den beiden Nationen ist von entscheidender Bedeutung, um gefährdete Schiffe rechtzeitig zu lokalisieren, aber trotz der offensichtlichen Veranlagung der marokkanischen Behörden sind die Ressourcen der Royal Navy und der Gendarmerie begrenzt und für die Rettung unzureichend.
Bis zum vergangenen Jahr übernahm Spanien die Hilfe von Migranten in Not, auch wenn sie sich in der marokkanischen Such- und Rettungszone befanden. Die Beteiligung des Nachbarlandes war begrenzt und die Kommunikation war nicht fließend: Marokko reagierte oft nicht einmal auf Anrufe von spanischen Kontrolltürmen. Angesichts der prekären Situation von Migranten, die um Hilfe baten, kam Salvamento Marítimo ihnen in Übereinstimmung mit dem Völkerrecht zu Hilfe, unabhängig von ihrem Standort. Im Jahr 2018 wurde ein Drittel der von Salvamento geretteten fast 50.000 Menschen in marokkanischen Gewässern gefunden.
Eine Fähre nach Motril rettet 27 Menschen, und sechs werden per Hubschrauber nach Almeria gebracht. -
Der Alhambra-Palast wird zur ständigen Heimat eines großen Amazigh-Museums.
ALhambra / CHRIS HEPBURN/GETTY ALHAMBRA Granada – In Alhambra, einem alten Palast, einer Festung und Zitadelle in Granada, Spanien, die jedes Jahr von Tausenden von Touristen aus der ganzen Welt besucht wird, soll ein permanentes Amazigh-Museum eingerichtet werden.
Das UNESCO-Weltkulturerbe beherbergt auch eine große Ausstellung über das Erbe der Amazigh in Zusammenarbeit mit der marokkanisch-mazighischen Unternehmerin Laila Mezian Benjelloun, die auf einer Vereinbarung der andalusischen Regierung während des letzten Besuchs in Marokko beruht.
Die Ministerin für Kultur und historisches Erbe, Patricia del Pozo, hat den Start der Ausstellung “La Granada zirí y el universo bereber” angekündigt, die bis April 2020 eröffnet werden soll, die gesamte Ausstellung wird von Antonio Malpica kuratiert.
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MOROCCO AS A TEST GARDEN FOR GERMAN GIFTGAS
Spain made intensive use of German chemical weapons during the Rif independence War in the 1920s to combat the Riffian resistance. To date, the Moroccan government has refused to give any openness about its effects on health and the environment in Rif. This despite repeated questions from civil societies in Rif.
Below you can read an article by Jan Hoffenaar historian connected to the Military History Section of the Army Staff Kingdom of the Netherlands.
MOROCCO AS A TEST GARDEN FOR GERMAN GIFTGAS
Jan Hoffenaar NRC Handelsblad, 02 March 1991
By Rudibert Kunz and Rolf-Dieter Muller
239 pages, geill., Rombach and Co 1990, f 45
ISBN 3 7930 0196 2The Geneva Protocol was solemnly signed on 17 June 1925. The (first) use of chemical and bacteriological weapons was therefore prohibited. Representatives from Spain, France and Germany also signed the agreement.
In the summer of the same year 1925, the use of combat gases against the rebellious Rifkabyls in Morocco reached a peak. Spain and France were the perpetrators.
This sensational coincidence is described by television editor Rudibert Kunz and historian Rolf-Dieter Muller in „Giftgas gegen Abd el Krim” associated with the Militargeschichtliches Forschungsamt in Freiburg. Until recently, everyone assumed that the Italian-Abyssinian war (1934-1936) was the first military conflict to be decided by gas, and the war between Iran and Iraq, which included the use of combat gases by Iraq in the summer of 1988 led to a truce, as the second case.
Kunz and Muller show conclusively in their book that the war in Morocco was the actually the first and that it served as an example to the Italians. The war against the Rifkabyls, one of the few unabashed Berber peoples, was also the first war in which poison gas bombs were dropped from the air on a large scale. In Morocco happened what everyone was so afraid of after the terrible experiences with war gases in the First World War.
The authors give us a glimpse into the chemical arms trade and manage to make it plausible how the German deliveries to Iraq (they still speak of a ‘begrundete Suspect’) and their help with the construction of a battle gas factory in Libya fit in with a long German tradition.
PROTECTORATE
Why was there a war in Morocco, how was it conducted and how was Germany involved? The northern part of the Sultanate of Morocco had been a protectorate of Spain since 1912. However, the protector, who had a number of enclaves on the North African coast for several centuries, was unable to actually control the area. Conventional weapons and a numerical predominance proved insufficient to bring the fanatical Rifkabyls to their knees in the inhospitable terrain.The uprising was also followed with suspicion by the colonial powers. The actions of Abd el Krim, who proclaimed the islamic Rif Republic in February 1923, sparked the newly created Islamic nationalism and constituted a threat to the European colonial power position. The right of peoples to self-determination, so nicely enshrined in the fourteen points of American President Woodrow Wilson, clearly did not apply to non-white peoples.
Spain has sought and found support from the German Reichswehr’s military since 1920. They did everything they could to avoid the humiliating provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. Among other things, Germany was denied any interference in the field of war gases. Chemical weapons were to be collected and destroyed in Munsterlage-Breloh. In practice, however, they were stored as much as possible and partly sold to other countries, such as Spain, Italy, Yugoslavia, Japan, China, Turkey, Romania, Sweden and Brazil. The key figures in these transactions were Professor Fritz Haber, initiator of German battle gas production and in 1918 winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, and Dr. Hugo Stoltzenberg, who was both an arms supplier and gas strategic advisor to the Reichswehr.
The Germans not only supplied various combat gases, but also made their technology available to the Spaniards. Under their leadership, poison gas plants were built in Maranosa, an hour’s drive south of Madrid, and in Melilla on the Moroccan coast. There, a non-toxic intermediate (Oxol), which was produced in spite of all bans in the Stoltzenberg chemical plant in Hamburg, was converted into the notorious mustard gas, also known as yperite, Lost and Gelbkreuz.
INTERESTS
Germany, which also participated in the construction of a poison gas plant in Russia since 1923, had different interests in military cooperation with Spain. All this offered the opportunity to keep the knowledge up to date and the chemical plant in Hamburg up and running. Moreover, the soldiers were able to learn a lot from the first aerochemical war in history through their own observation. In addition, the Germans had economic interests in Morocco. The Mannesmann brothers had built up a network of mining concessions, trading companies and agricultural companies there in the previous decades. In the French part of Morocco they had already lost their influence after 1918. In the Spanish part they hoped to keep it by a Spanish victory.In addition, an emotional factor played a role in the German attitude. Part of the French troops occupying the Rhineland – an extremely humiliating experience for Germany – came from Morocco. A big problem was the children they had there, the Rheinlandbastarden, which were later sterilized under Hitler.
In the middle of 1924 the Spaniards, led by General Primo de Rivera, who had taken over power in Spain the previous year with the promise to resolve the Morocco crisis quickly and honorably, proceeded to a tactical retreat. That happened entirely against the wishes of Franco, who at that time was the commander of the foreign legion. After the evacuation, the air bombing started with mustard gas bombs in the areas of the insurgents.
At the end of 1924, the French joined the battle. The revolt of the Rifkabyls, which, like the Kurds, were separated by artificial borders, had also spread to the French protectorate area. The hero of the First World War, Petain, took over the supreme command there in 1925.
Although there are too few clues to precisely reconstruct the so-called ‘contamination strategy’, Kunz and Muller suspect that it consisted of two phases based on notes from Nobel Prize Stolzenberg. First villages, farmland and water sources were contaminated with mustard gas, so that the rebels no longer had any bases, and then the roads, shelters and caves were contaminated and smoked. Fire bombs were also dropped.
BLOWS AND WOUNDS
The effect of mustard gas is terrible, as the horrible images from the first Gulf War have also shown. The liquid penetrates through all clothing and after a few hours causes blisters and wounds that are very painful. The vapors cause temporary or permanent blindness and affect the respiratory organs. The Rifkabyls could not protect themselves and did not know how to combat the infection and treat the wounds. Many died as a result.With the help of gas and airplanes, a force of half a million French and Spaniards finally managed to defeat the insurgents. Abd el Krim surrendered in May 1926 and the war was finally over in 1927.
We already knew that war gases were used in Morocco. Although we do not find any clue about gas use in the official historiography of the war, Historia de las Campanas de Marruecos, David S. Woolman, among others, makes this in Rebels in the Rif (1968) report. What we did not know, however, is that the use of gas has been so extensive and decisive for the outcome of the battle. How can that be explained? Those involved kept their mouths shut as much as possible. They also diverted attention, camouflaged the effort and bluntly denied it. Moreover, agreements about chemical cooperation were usually made verbally. Journalists were excluded from the scene of war as much as possible. The victims were not heard. A cry for help to the International Committee of the Red Cross received no follow-up because the Spanish government did not allow a mission from this organization to Spanish Morocco.
Another explanation for the unfamiliarity with the true circumstances of the war in Morocco is, of course, that the important archives in question remained closed to historians. Kunz and Muller rely primarily on German archives. Official Spanish sources remained closed to them, while Morocco did not cooperate at all. In the French archives, the authors have hardly, if at all, investigated, a strange omission.
NOTES
The authors did, however, have the notes of Dr. Stoltzenberg, who wrote down and commented on all his actions. Skillfully comparing the scarce data and the annotations with the better documented descriptions of the Italian-Abyssinian war, in which the circumstances were comparable to those in the Rif war, many things that have not yet been clarified could be understood. Nevertheless, the comment made twice that the gas deployment in the Rif was an example for the Italian campaign in Abyssinie is not further substantiated by Kunz and Muller.Gift gas gegen Abdel Krim presses us again, also through many penetrating photographs, on the terrible facts of chemical warfare. Moreover, the book teaches us that a healthy skepticism towards compliance with international agreements, especially with regard to non-conventional means of combat, is highly desirable. Negotiations on the abolition of chemical weapons have been going on for years, but “man ist nicht weiter als 1925”, as Kunz and Muller remark gloomily.
Source: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/1991/03/02/marokko-als-proeftuin-voor-duits-gifgas-6958918-a70860
Translation: Najat M.
