Saida Menebhi

Saida Menebhi (1952 in Marrakesh – 11 December 1977 in Casablanca) was a Moroccan poet, high school teacher, and activist with the Marxist revolutionary movement Ila al-Amam. In 1975, she, together with five other members of the movement, was sentenced for seven years of imprisonment for anti-state activity. On November 8, 1977, inside the jail in Casablanca, she participated in a collective hunger strike, and died on the 35th day of the strike at Avicenne Hospital.^[1][2]

Her poetry, collected and published first in 1978, and later again in 2000, is considered a prime example of Moroccan revolutionary and feminist literature. She wrote in French. Translations of a selection of her poems to English were published for the first time in 2021 by See Red Press.^[3]

Abduction

On January 16, 1976, Saida Menebhi was abducted and detained—along with 3 other female militants, Rabea Ftouh, Piera di Maggio and Fatima Oukacha—in the secret Moulay Sherif Prison in Casablanca, now known as a prominent center of torture in the period of King Hassan II.^[4] There, they were subjected to a number of different kinds of physical and psychological torture before being transferred to the civilian prison in Casablanca.^[5] Menebhi and her comrades Fatima Oukacha and Rabea Ftouh were sentenced to indefinite^{[citation needed]} solitary confinement in the civilian prison of Casablanca.^[6][5]

Published work

• Menebhi, Saïda (1978). Poèmes, lettres, écrits de prison (in French). Comités de lutte contre la répression au Maroc.^[7]
• Menebhi, Saïda (2021). Prison, Poetry, Martyrdom: Saida Menebhi and the Moroccan Years of Lead. See Red Press.

References