http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2001/0808/wor5.htm







Officer reveals details

of Barka's murder





By Lara Marlowe



PARIS LETTER:



Ahmed Boukhari remembers every detail of the acid tank they used to dissolve

Ben Barka's body.



It was Boukhari, then a young officer in the Moroccan intelligence service,

who ordered the tank from the company that made boilers for Moroccan

railways. A Col Martin of the CIA highly recommended the system to his

trainees in the north African kingdom, saying it had worked well for the

Iranian SAVAK.



Made of stainless steel, 1.5 metres high and 2.5 metres wide, slightly curved

on the top and bottom, the tank was installed at the Dar-el-Mokri torture

centre in Casa Blanca. It took two men wearing protective masks, suits and

gloves to fill it.



The acid was so strong it destroyed everything, "even big bones like the

femur", Boukhari recalled in a landmark interview with Le Monde and the

Moroccan weekly, Le Journal, this summer.



Between 1961 and 1967, Boukhari added, dozens of opponents to King Hassan II

disappeared inside the shiny receptacle. "Pity we can't soak you in acid," Mr

Abraham Serfaty, who survived King Hassan's prisons (see The Irish Times,

February 21st, 2001) remembers his own torturer saying.



Boukhari's testimony resolved two great mysteries surrounding the

disappearance in October 1965, of the opposition leader Mehdi Ben Barka. Who

killed the charismatic maths professor and Third World militant?



And what happened to his body? Boukhari was the duty officer at the "cab 1"

headquarters of the Moroccan intelligence service on the weekend when Ben

Barka was "arrested" outside the Brasserie Lipp in Saint-Germain-des-Pr�s by

two French policemen working for King Hassan.



"Mission accomplished. The package is ready for shipment. Send the aircraft,"

was the message dictated from France by Mohamed Achaachi, the head of the

Moroccan "counter-subversion" department, to his superiors. Boukhari conveyed

the words to Gen Mohamed Oufkir and his deputy, Commandant Ahmed Dlimi.



Gen Oufkir was the King's right-hand man, minister of the interior, head of

national security and the intelligence services. Both Gene Oufkir and

Commandant Dlimi flew to Paris, where they joined in the interrogation of Ben

Barka, who was handcuffed and hung from the ceiling in a suburban villa.



Moroccan agents who witnessed the scene later told Boukhari how Oufkir cut

little pieces of flesh from Ben Barka's chest with a dagger.



King Hassan had kept 30 agents working full time for seven months, tracking

Ben Barka from Cairo to Algiers to Geneva, listening to his phone calls,

opening his mail. Oufkir intended to drug the opposition leader and spirit

him back to Morocco on a military aircraft - not kill him.



Back in Rabat, the CIA colonel realised the operation had gone wrong and

nervously hung around Boukhari's office. At Orly airport, the liaison officer

between Air France and the French and Moroccan intelligence services, Antoine

Lopez, arranged for a Moroccan diplomatic car to transfer Ben Barka's body to

a Moroccan military aircraft.



A French diplomat booked Gen Oufkir and Commandant Dlimi back to Morocco on a

commercial flight.



Boukhari saw a police commissioner rush off carrying an array of cameras. The

body, still dressed in the suit Ben Barka wore when he was kidnapped, was

photographed on a stretcher in the courtyard of the torture centre.



For the pictures they kept in their files, Moroccan agents put Ben Barka's

hat and sunglasses back on his head. The only copy of the film taken as the

body was lowered into the acid tank was given to King Hassan for his private

viewing.



Gen Oufkir was killed in an attempted coup against King Hassan seven years

later, and his wife and children were then imprisoned for 18 years. Three

French thugs who participated in Ben Barka's kidnapping fled to Morocco,

where they were later murdered on Commandant Dlimi's orders. King Hassan died

in July 1999, and was succeeded by his son, Mohamed VI.



For 36 years, the Ben Barka affair has symbolised the complicity of Western

intelligence services in propping up dictators.



Morocco changed, and one of Ben Barka's comrades, Mr Abderrahmane Youssoufi,

is now the country's prime minister. But socialist party activists still say

that "Ben Barka's corpse lies between the left and the monarchy".



King Mohamed VI has allowed Ben Barka's family to visit Morocco (see The

Irish Times October 27th, 1999) and a French investigating magistrate

travelled there in June. Then Ahmed Boukhari's sordid account of the murder

was published. Prime Minister Youssoufi said this week that there could be no

statute of limitations for Ben Barka's murder, "For it was a political crime

in which several states were implicated".



At least three of the intelligence agents whom Boukhari says witnessed Ben

Barka's death are now comfortably retired. There are calls for them to be

questioned, but Mohamed VI has shown little inclination to delve into the

dark side of his father's reign.





