Draft:Saleh Hachad
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Salah Hachad | |
|---|---|
| Native name | صالح حشاد |
| Born | 1938 (age 86–87) Oulad Ayyach, Beni Mellal, Morocco |
| Allegiance |  Morocco |
| Service | Royal Moroccan Air Force |
| Years of service | 1957–1972 |
| Rank | Squadron leader |
| Service | Cold-War era air patrols |
Salah Hachad (Arabic: صالح حشاد; born 1938) is a retired Moroccan fighter pilot and former squadron leader in the Royal Moroccan Air Force. One of the country’s earliest jet aviators, he became embroiled—willingly or otherwise—in the 1972 Moroccan coup attempt, was sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment and spent eighteen of them in the secret Tazmamart desert jail. Freed in 1991, he later recounted his experiences in a widely viewed 2009 televised interview series.
Early life and education
[edit]Hachad was born in 1938 in the village of Oulad Ayyach near Beni Mellal.[1] He entered the Royal Military Academy in Marrakesh in February 1957 and completed fighter-pilot training in France in 1959.[1]
Military career
[edit]- 1960–1965: Flew Soviet-supplied MiG fighters donated to King Mohammed V, giving their farewell display in 1965 after Morocco pivoted to U.S. equipment.[1]
- 1965–1967: Re-trained on the Northrop F-5 at Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma, graduating top of his class and receiving the unit’s Top Gun shield.[1]
- 1968–1969: Completed a year’s advanced course at Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, and flew in the graduation show as the only non-American pilot.[1]
By 1972 he was squadron leader at Kenitra Air Base and regarded as one of Morocco’s best aviators.[2]
1972 coup attempt
[edit]On 16 August 1972 four F-5 fighters from Hachad’s escort formation opened fire on King Hassan II’s Boeing 727 as it entered Moroccan airspace from France; the aircraft was riddled with cannon fire but landed safely at Rabat–Salé Airport.[3][4]
Hachad and other surviving air-force officers were arrested, tried by court-martial and sentenced to twenty years in prison.[3]
Imprisonment in Tazmamart
[edit]From 1973 to 1991 Hachad was held in the clandestine Tazmamart prison. Fellow detainee Ahmed Marzouki recalled that in 1979 Hachad and pilot M’barek Touil secretly contacted their wives, enabling medicine and news from the outside world to reach the jail.[2] Jeremy Harding likewise notes that “Salah Hachad … began receiving medicines: his wife, Aïda, a pharmacist, had bribed the guards.”[5]
Release and later life
[edit]Hachad was freed in September 1991 amid a broader political thaw and lived quietly until 2009, when he gave an eleven-episode interview on the Al Jazeera programme Shāhid ʿalā al-ʿAṣr (“Witness to History”), bringing his story to a wide Arabic-speaking audience.[1]
As of 2025 he resides in Morocco and occasionally speaks at human-rights events.[5]
Legacy
[edit]Hachad’s testimony is cited in scholarly work on the “Years of Lead” and on prison memory in Morocco.[6]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e f Mansour, Ahmed (22 July 2009). "صالح حشاد [Salah Hachad]". AhmedMansour.com (in Arabic). Retrieved 16 May 2025.
- ^ a b Maghraoui, Abdeslam (1 September 2015). "The Moroccan Non-Exception: A Conversation with Ahmed Marzouki". Jadaliyya. Retrieved 16 May 2025.
- ^ a b "Morocco: Hassan's Military Proves Untrustworthy". Foreign Relations of the United States. 17 August 1972. Retrieved 16 May 2025.
- ^ "Failed coup of August 16, 1972: the account of King Hassan II's bodyguard". TelQuel English. 27 January 2025. Retrieved 16 May 2025.
- ^ a b Harding, Jeremy (10 February 2022). "You're with your king". London Review of Books. Retrieved 16 May 2025.
- ^ El Guabli, Bhakti (2019). ""Descending into Hell": Tazmamart, civic activism and the politics of memory". Memory Studies. 12 (4): 435–452. doi:10.1177/1750698019836191.
Further reading
[edit]- Aziz BineBine, Tazmamart: Eighteen Years in Morocco’s Secret Prison (Haus, 2021).
- Aïda & Salah Hachad, Tazmamart côté femme (Casablanca: Éditions Tarik, 2003).