Mehdi Ben Barka

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Mehdi Ben Barka (born 1920 – disappeared October 29, 1965) (Arabic: المهدي بن بركة) was a Moroccan politician.

Contents

[edit] 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. On Dec. 29, 1975, Time Magazine published an article called "The Murder of Mehdi Ben Barka", stating that three Moroccan agents were responsible for the death of Ben Barka, one of them former Interior Minister Mohammed Oufkir. Speculation persists as to CIA involvement. French intelligence agents and Israeli Mossad were also implicated in the Time article.

[edit] The exile and global political significance

Ben Barka is exiled in 1963, becoming a “committed-voyageur of the revolution”, according to the expression of the historian Jean Lacouture. He leaves initially for Algiers, where he meets Che Guevara, Amilcar Cabral and Malcolm X. From there he goes to Cairo, Rome, Geneva and La Havana, trying to federate the revolutionary movements of the Third World for Tricontinentale having to be held in January 1966 in La Havana and where he affirmed in a press conference, “the two currents of the world revolution will be represented there: the current emerged with the October Revolution and that of the national liberation revolution”.

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.

Chairing the preparatory commission, he defines the objectives; assistance with the movements of liberation, support for Cuba subjected to the United States embargo, the liquidation of the foreign military bases and apartheid in South Africa. For the historian Rene Galissot, “it is in this revolutionary dash of Tricontinentale that the major cause of the removal and the assassination of Ben Barka was”.

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.

[edit] Theories on the disappearance of Ben Barka

[edit] 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. Prefect of police Maurice Papon (1910-2007), later convicted for crimes against humanity for his role under Vichy, was forced to resign following Ben Barka's kidnapping.

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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 classified 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 the ultimate responsibility of the king Hassan II.

[edit] Bibliography

  • (French) Ben Barka, Mehdi (1957-1965). Écrits politiques. Syllepse. ISBN 2-907993-93-3. 

[edit] Filmography

  • I saw Ben Barka get killed (2005) by Serge Le Péron [1]
  • Ben Barka - The Moroccan Equation (2002) by Simone Bitton [2]

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  • Ali Bourequat (1998), In the Moroccan King's Secret Gardens, Maurice Publishers
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