Consigned to a living tomb: Aziz BineBine endures 18 years in a subterranean prison

Imagine being on indefinite lockdown, imprisoned in a dark, underground, 6’ x 12’ cell, freezing in winter, boiling in summer and infested with cockroaches and scorpions. The bed is a narrow concrete ledge, where you can only sleep on your side. The toilet has no U-bend, and your cell, No. 13, at the end of a run of cells, receives all the waste and floodwater from the others. There are no windows.

Aziz BineBine spent his young adult life there, 18 years from 1973 to 1991. His crime was to have participated unwittingly as a young cadet officer in an abortive 1971 coup against Hassan II of Morocco. He escaped, bewildered, from a bloodbath at the palace without having fired a shot. He turned himself in, was tried and imprisoned. A year later, when a second coup attempt was crushed, he and others were sent to Tazmamart, a secret prison beneath a hangar in the desert whose very existence was denied by the Moroccan government.