Christine Daure-Serfaty

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Christine Daure-Serfaty is a writer and a French human rights activist, who distinguished herself in Morocco where she embraced the fight of the victims of King Hassan II, during the “years of lead”’, and from afar, played a major role in the evolution of the regime and the human rights in Morocco. She is the wife of Abraham Serfaty, a Moroccan dissident.

1 Biography
2 References
3 Source
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Biography

Christine Daure arrived in Morocco in 1962. In 1972, in Casablanca, she hid two political dissidents wanted by the Moroccan police: Abraham Serfaty who ended up sentenced to life in prison in 1974, and Abdellatif Zeroual, who died under torture after his arrest. During these years, she fought to save Abraham Serfaty of the same fate. She will finally obtain the right to marry him in jail in 1986 and settles in Rabat.

She is the one who first denounced the existence of the secret prison of death Tazmamart, which has been denied for years by the Moroccan authorities, until one year later, the book by Gilles Perrault, “Notre ami le roi” (‘’Our friend, the King’’, a book she helped to write though her name didn't appear) that mentions the prison at a political level, radically changed the image of Hassan II’s regime in the western world and contributed to its evolution in the following years.

As a result, many prisoners are, one after the other, saved from a certain death. Her husband Abraham Serfaty is released from jail in 1991, after seventeen years of imprisonment, torture and isolation, and is immediately expelled to France. Christine Daure-Serfaty will also be expelled, without any explication, after being arrested and detained at a police station for one night.

It’s only after eight years of exile and two months after Hassan II’s death, in September 1999, that the couple was authorized by King Mohamed VI of Morocco to come back to Morocco.