Mehdi Ben Barka

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Mehdi Ben Barka (1920 in Rabat – disappeared 1965 in Paris) was a Moroccan politician. Ben Barka was born to a civil servant and became the first Moroccan to get a degree in mathematics 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 UNFP. Ben Barka was a major figure in the Third World movement and supported revolutionary anti-colonial action in various states, incurring the wrath of the US and France. In 1962 he 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 29 October 1965 Ben Barka was “disappeared” in Paris by French police officers and never seen again. While Morocco 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.

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.

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. (See link below)

Moroccan-French dissident and former Tazmamart prisoner of conscience Ali Bourequat also claims to have overheard discussions on Ben Barka's murder. He describes this in his book In the Moroccan King's Secret Garden.

In 1976, the United States government, due to requests made through the Freedom of Information Act, acknowledged that the CIA was in possession of some 1,800 documents involving Ben Barka, but the documents were not released. 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.

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