Mehdi Ben Barka
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Mehdi Ben Barka (born 1920 – disappeared October 29, 1965) (Arabic: المهدي بن بركة) was a Moroccan politician.
Background
Ben Barka was born in Rabat to a civil servant and became the first Moroccan to get a degree in mathematics in an official French school in 1950. He became a prominent member of the Moroccan opposition in the nationalist Istiqlal party, but broke off after clashes with conservative opponents in 1959 to found the left-wing National Union of Popular Forces (UNFP).
In 1962, Ben Barka was accused of plotting against king Hassan II and exiled. After supporting Algeria against a Moroccan invasion in 1963, he was sentenced to death in absentia.
On October 29, 1965 Mehdi Ben Barka was "disappeared" in Paris by French police officers and never seen again. While the Moroccan government denies this, most observers now assume he was murdered after having been handed over to Moroccan agents. Speculation persists as to CIA involvement, and the exact extent of French complicity is unknown.
Political significance
As the leader of the Tricontinental Conference, Ben Barka was a major figure in the Third World movement and supported revolutionary anti-colonial action in various states, provoking the anger of the United States and France. Just before his death, he was preparing first meeting of the Tricontinental, scheduled to take place in Havana, Cuba - the OSPAAAL (Spanish for "Organization for Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia and Latin America") was founded at this occasion.
Ben Barka remains a venerated figure in the Moroccan left-wing opposition, and as the exact circumstances of his disappearance and presumed death remain unknown, is still a subject of heated debate.
Theories on the disappearance of Ben Barka
French trial
In a 1967 trial in France, two French officers were sent to prison for their role in the kidnapping. However, the judge ruled that the main guilty party was Moroccan interior minister Mohamed Oufkir. Georges Figon, a witness with a criminal background, who had testified earlier that Oufkir stabbed Ben Barka to death, was later found dead, officially a suicide.Ahmed Boukhari
A former member of the Moroccan secret service, Ahmed Boukhari claimed in 2001 that Ben Barka had died during interrogation in a villa south of Paris. He said Ben Barka's body was then taken back to Morocco and destroyed in a vat of acid. Furthermore, he declared that this vat of acid, whose plans were reproduced by the newspapers, had been constructed under instructions from the CIA agent "Colonel Martin", who had learnt this technique to make disappear corpses during his appointment in the Shah's Iran in the 1950s. Henceforth, a pattern of "disappearances", starting from Iran, passing by Morocco in the 1960-70s, and continuing on into South America's dirty wars during the 1970s-80s was discovered. (See link below)Ali Bourequat
Moroccan-French dissident and former Tazmamart prisoner of conscience Ali Bourequat claims in his book, In the Moroccan King's Secret Garden, to have met a former Moroccan secret agent in a prison near Rabat in 1973-74. The man, Dubail, recounted how he and some colleagues, led by Col. Oufkir and Ahmed Dlimi, had murdered Ben Barka in Paris on the orders of king Hassan, with the assistance of the French secret services.The body was then encapsulated in cement and buried outside Paris, but his head brought by Oufkir to Morocco in a suitcase, so the king could personally confirm Ben Barka's death. Thereafter it was buried on the very same prison grounds where Dubail and Bourequat were held.
CIA documents
In 1976, the United States government, due to requests made through the Freedom of Information Act, acknowledged that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was in possession of some 1,800 documents involving Ben Barka, but the documents were not released.French documents
Some secret French documents on the affair were made public in 2001, causing political uproar. Defence minister Michèle Alliot-Marie had agreed in 2004 to follow the recommendations of a national defence committee and release the 73 additional classifed documents on the case. However, the son of Mehdi Ben Barka was outraged at what he called a "pseudo-release of files", insisting that information had been withheld which could have implicated the French secret services (SDECE), and possibly the CIA and the Mossad, as well as ultimate responsibility of the king Hassan II.External links
- [Morocco's dirty war] The Nation on the Ben Barka affair
- [Various English articles - including interview with son of Ben Barka and review of Ahmed Boukari's revelations] from L'Humanite on the occasion of the anniversary of Ben Barka's disappearance (search: "Ben Barka").
- [Photo]
References
- Ali Bourequat (1998), In the Moroccan King's Secret Gardens, Maurice Publishers
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