ESPIONAGE: The Murder of Mehdi Ben Barka

On the gray afternoon of Oct. 29, 1965, Mehdi Ben Barka—a self-exiled left-wing Moroccan politician and a well-known critic of King Hassan II —was stopped outside the Brasserie Lipp on Paris’s Boulevard St. Germain by two French agents. “You have a rendezvous with some politicians,” said one of them. Ben Barka, 45, who was accustomed to being tailed by the police, climbed into the back of an unmarked Peugeot 403. The car drove off. Ben Barka has not been seen in public since.

The disappearance of Ben Barka grew into a scandal that rocked France. Because of widespread rumors that French intelligence agencies were involved, President Charles de Gaulle ordered a full-dress inquiry. Frenchmen were appalled to discover that a Moroccan political refugee had been kidnaped and presumably murdered in France with the apparent help of the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE) which was and is France’s equivalent of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Open Case. Ben Barka’s corpse was never found, nor were his suspected murderers. Even though the scandal has died down, the case remains open. Last October, one day before the tenth anniversary of his father’s disappearance, Ben Barka’s son Bachir, 25, brought judicial proceedings under French law “against unknown persons” for murder and complicity to murder, a maneuver to prevent the statute of limitations from running out.

TIME has learned that Ben Barka was indeed killed by three high Moroccan officials in an act of loyalty to King Hassan; one of them was former Interior Minister Mohammed Oufkir, who died in 1972; the other two were Moroccan agents, one of whom still holds an important position in the Rabat government; the other is reportedly still a Moroccan intelligence official. According to one of TIME’S sources, Ben Barka’s body was interred in the garden of a villa at Fontenay-le-Vicomte, a Paris suburb; 16 days later, for fear that inquisitive French police might discover it, the corpse was hastily exhumed and reburied on the southeast bank of the Ile de la Grande Jatte opposite the Boulevard General Leclerc, in another Paris suburb, Neuilly-sur-Seine.

Although Ben Barka was kidnaped by French intelligence agents, TIME has also learned that he was in the pay of the French. He received monthly stipends from a French scientific research center—in fact, a cover for intelligence activities in North Africa.

Also involved in the case was Israel’s CIA equivalent, known as Mossad. Although Morocco later supported Arab confrontation states in the Middle East wars, it had excellent relations with Israel after it became independent in 1956. For example, Morocco arranged, through the French, to have Mossad train its own fledgling secret service. Mossad’s chief Moroccan contact was Oufkir. At one point after the Moroccans had decided to get rid of Ben Barka, Oufkir asked Mossad to obtain some poison for him. The agency declined, but later agreed to help tail Ben Barka, who was then living in Geneva.

Prince’s Tutor. According to TIME’S sources, this is the sequence of events that led to the murder of Ben Barka on that October day in Paris ten years ago:

A native of Rabat and the son of a grocer, Mehdi Ben Barka had been active in politics from the age of 14, when he joined a Moroccan independence movement. For a time he was a tutor to Hassan, then the country’s Crown Prince. After Morocco gained its independence, Ben Barka’s friendship with Hassan turned sour as he moved leftward in his politics and eventually headed Morocco’s political opposition. In 1963, he was elected president of the National Consultative Assembly. Ben Barka later fled into exile in Algeria, and was condemned to death in absentia, allegedly for taking part in a plot against Hassan’s life.

Even though Ben Barka moved from Algeria to Geneva, he was still considered a threat by Hassan. “This man disturbs me,” the King frequently said of Ben Barka. As chief of national security, Interior Minister Oufkir launched “Operation Ben Barka”—at first to keep track of the leftist dissident, but then to murder him. Working with French intelligence agents, Oufkir was able to lure Ben Barka from Geneva to Paris on a plausible but phony pretext: that Director Georges Franju (Head Against the Walls, Red Nights) wanted to make a film documentary about decolonization. Ben Barka was to meet Franju for lunch at the Brasserie Lipp when he was accosted by the two agents.

These men drove Ben Barka to the villa in Fontenay-le-Vicomte, which was owned by Georges (“Jo”) Boucheseiche, a small-time hood and bordello operator who also worked for the SDECE. About 30 men guarded the villa where Ben Barka was imprisoned.

Word that Ben Barka had been kidnaped was flashed to Rabat by Ahmed Dlimi, Oufkir’s deputy for intelligence operations, who had surreptitiously entered France in order to supervise the first stage of “Operation Ben Barka.” Oufkir immediately went to France; his cover story for leaving Rabat was that he intended to visit Switzerland, where his children were in school.

The second night after his capture, Ben Barka was confronted in a bedroom of the villa by Interior Minister Oufkir and by two other Moroccans. All three carried pistols. “Who gave you the authorization for what you are doing?” Ben Barka demanded angrily. Replied Oufkir: “We are here in the name of our master and for the sake of Morocco.” For several minutes, the three Moroccans carried on a loud argument with their prisoner. Then one of them said: “Let’s finish this comedy. You were sentenced to death in Morocco. Now you’re going to get it.” At that a shot rang out and Ben Barka fell dying. He was hastily buried at the villa. Afterward, Oufkir flew to Switzerland for his family visit and the other officials returned by roundabout routes to Morocco. According to TIME’S sources, two of the agents present at the murder returned to France and supervised the reburial of Ben Barka’s corpse.

Two months after Ben Barka’s disappearance, French police in the course of their investigation searched the villa’s garden. Of course, they did not find the body, which by then was lying in its grave on the Il de la Grande Jatte.

Violent Deaths. Thirteen people were eventually charged with crimes related to the Ben Barka case, but few actually stood trial. Oufkir and an intelligence agent code named “Chtouki” (real name: Mohammed Miloued) refused to return to France. They were convicted in absentia of illegal arrest and confinement and given life sentences. Dlimi did stand trial and was acquitted. Two of the French undercover agents got prison terms for “illegally detaining” him. Other people involved in the murder try to live in the shadows. Since Ben Barka’s death, at least 37 people connected with the case have disappeared; some are known to have died violently. Oufkir reportedly committed suicide after the failure of an assassination plot against King Hassan in 1972. Two French operatives were murdered; a third, according to official reports, committed suicide as police moved in to pick him up for questioning. Villa Owner Boucheseiche, meanwhile, disappeared shortly after the murder and has never been seen again. “Too many people knew too much,” one French participant told TIME. “The Moroccans and the SDECE have a long memory.”