Ahmed Bouchiki

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Ahmed Bouchiki, an Algerian-born Moroccan citizen working as a waiter in Lillehammer, Norway, was killed by Israeli agents of the Mossad intelligence agency on July 21, 1973, in what is known as the Lillehammer affair.

He was shot in front of his pregnant Norwegian wife as they returned from a movie. Six Israelis were arrested for the assassination. Bouchiki had been mistakenly identified by the Mossad as Ali Hassan Salameh, one of the leaders of the Black September, a Palestinian militant organization, which was responsible for the Munich Massacre. He was being targeted in an ongoing Israeli counterrorism campaign called Operation Wrath of God.

Two of the Mossad agents involved in assassinating Bouchiki, Dan Ert and Marianne Gladnikoff, rented cars under their own names. They were arrested when they returned the cars to Oslo airport. Under interrogation, they provided the address of a Mossad safe house and four other agents were arrested. One member of the hit squad was using the identity of Canadian Patricia Roxborough, a legal secretary whose passport had been stolen months earlier from the desk of her Montreal office.

In 1996, the Israeli government paid compensation equal to US$119,000 to Bouchiki's wife and daughter, but has never admitted responsibility for the killing. Five of the Mossad agents served short terms in prison and were pardoned. Another of the Mossad agents married her Norwegian lawyer. Salameh was assassinated in Beirut in 1979 in a Mossad car bomb attack.

Ahmed Bouchiki's younger brother, Chico Bouchikhi is a famous musician, and one of the founders of The Gipsy Kings. According to him, the murder of his brother strained his family in Arles, France to the breaking point because rumors assumed that Bouchiki was involved in anti-Israeli activities. "We just could not understand what had happened. You can say that my father died of grief and my mother never recovered from the shock. My brother's widow is forever traumatized and never married again."^[1]