"It's so much pain. You feel so alone at that moment, so alone," says Noureddin Bongo, recalling the torture regime he says he was subjected to at the hands of military guards in Gabon. Noureddin was stripped of his clothes, thrust into a cell little bigger than a storage cupboard, and forced to sleep on concrete. Guards would push a hunk of bread through the slot in the cell door and sometimes it landed in a pool of urine in the corner.
When Noureddin was dragged away from his family by gun-toting soldiers in balaclavas, he snatched a goodbye to his wife Léa, but believed it was a mistake that would soon be ironed out. His father, Ali Bongo, had just been re-elected for a third term of office as President of Gabon, and Noureddin was making preparations to return with his wife and young children to their life in London.
