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Abraham Serfaty

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Abraham Serfaty, a political dissident and editor of the literary magazine Souffles, endured 17 years of imprisonment and 13 years of exile for his political views. Serfaty, who was sentenced solely on account of his political and literary activities, served a life sentence from 1974 until his release from prison in September 1991. His Moroccan citizenship was revoked upon his release from prison, but was reinstated in 1999.

Case Background

Abraham Serfaty was born in 1926 in Casablanca, in what was then the French protectorate of Morocco, to a middle-class Jewish family. In the 1940s, while studying engineering in France, he joined several communist parties. He remained active within them through his return to Morocco in 1950 and Moroccan independence in 1956. He remained a member until 1970, when he grew disillusioned with communist party bureaucracy, and formed the Marxist-Leninist organization known as Ila al-Amam. The group was opposed by the monarchy of King Hassan II, and Serfaty was arrested and tortured in 1972, but released following student protests. He went into hiding but was arrested again in 1974, and in 1977 he and four others were charged with “plotting against state security,” and sentenced to life in prison. 

Serfaty was awarded PEN America’s 1991 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award shortly before his release from prison. He attributed his release in no small part to the campaign mounted on his behalf by his wife, Christine Jouvin, and by PEN. Serfaty died in Marrakech in November 2010.