06 Jul 2011
Mr. Azzedine Mohamed Abdeslam BOUJNANE is a 28-year-old Moroccan national. Three weeks after his arrival in Iraq for humanitarian purposes, Mr. BOUJNANE was arrested at the end of February 2004 by American soldiers in Baghdad and brought to Baghdad airport. He also reports that he was treated inhumanely with his hands and feet tied. For six days, he was continuously and violently beaten, given eletric shocks and threatened with sexual assault in order to get him to sign confessions.
He was then transferred to Abu Ghraib prison where he was again submitted to all kinds of cruel and degrading treatments before being presented for the first time before a judge in June 2005. After his "trial hearing" in July 2005 he refused the assistance of the person introduced as his lawyer as he was there merely as an insult.
Mr. Azzedine BOUJNANE requested to choose his own lawyer and to be able to at least contact his family or the Moroccan authorities, but was refused on all counts. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for having illegally entered the territory.
He later learned that he was in fact condemned to 15 years in prison. Since 2006, he has served his sentence at Soussa prisons like the other detainees cited in the present communication.