Victims of Morocco’s former leader, King Hassan II, will have another chance to reform the country, after their cases of abuse under the dictator’s rule will go public this month. This is the first time that Morocco has attempted to reconcile with its past since the King’s death in 1999.

There are believed to be at least 22,000 applications by alleged victims of torture or unlawful abductions inflicted under Hassan’s rule. The assaults happened after the North African country’s independence in 1956 and continued until the king’s death in 1999.

Maria Sharaf, one of the victims, stated that she and her husband were arrested simply for holding opinions unpopular with the regime of King Hassan II. In prison, Maria listened to her husband’s screams as he was tortured, reported the BBC.

“Some days I didn’t see him and I didn’t hear him. The police told me he was in hospital, but three days after that, when I came back home, we had a telegram saying that he was dead.”

The Commission is also set up to compensate the victims and their families. Yet for Maria Sharaf the $15,000 dollars she received was not enough to compensate herself and her son for their loss.

The Equity and Reconciliation Commission (IER) has taken the unusual approach of airing the victims’ tales of torture live on state television. The commission is the first to be set up in an Arab country but many human rights activists are arguing that the current leader, King Mohammad VI, is still not going far enough.

“We have cases of people who have been tortured, kidnapped and some of them killed for their political views, even last year,” stated the Moroccan Association for Human Rights, reported the BBC.

Yet given the continual steps the king has taken in releasing political prisoners and addressing the state- sponsored terror inflicted on his people by his father it appears Morocco is on the road to dealing with its past persecutions.