Big Brother Watches Still: Torture in the Modern Maghrib

Laila Lalami has a chilling piece on the persistence of torture in modern Morocco. Because the victims are not celebrities, they suffer and die unnoticed by the Western media — out of sight, out of mind. While the Kingdom has broken very publicly with the "Years of Lead," during which there was widespread torture of political dissidents under King Hassan II, incidents such as those reported by Lalami are a chilling counterpoint to the current regime's bright face of prosperity, particularly when coupled with ongoing suppression of any kind of free press.

Periodic reports on Morocco's Human Rights Record are available at Human Rights Watch.