Danse Macabre
BEN BARKA AFFAIR
By MARGARET POPE
LAsa- week what has come to be known as the Ben Barka affair took on a new lease of life. Not so, unfortunately, the missing man, Ben Barka himself, whose ultimate fate remains as much a mystery as ever despite nearly eight
weeks of lengthy hearings before the Seine Assize Court in Paris. This is not particularly surprising, since all those accused of effecting or aiding the kidnapping of Ben Barka in broad daylight in the heart of Paris on October 29, 1965, who actually appeared in court were all secondary characters or, as General de Gaulle would have described them, 'Vulgar and subordinate ele- ments.' None of them, with the possible excep- tion of Antoine Lopez, the Air France official who worked as a double agent for the French and Moroccan secret services, knew what had happened to Ben Barka after he was arrested and handed over to a well-known gangster living on the outskirts of Paris. Up to last week, all the principal performers in this danse macabre, all those who do know what happened to the missing man, have been absent. Then dramatically everything changed. Last Wednesday as the court listened to the final pleadings for the defence, a sleek grey car drew up in the courtyard of the Assizes and a tall, handsome man, aged thirty-five, stepped briskly out and handed himself over to a posse of specially detailed policemen. This was Lieutenant-Colonel Ahmed Dlimi, chief of Morocco's security forces and one of the principal accused.
The scenario was perfect: Dlimi had shaved off his moustache and was supposed to have slipped into France secretly some thirty hours before. But no one was deceived. Everything was too well arranged: the trial had shown without a shadow of doubt that there had been collusion on the part of the French police services in the kidnapping, but doubt remained as to how high up this had gone. In the case of Dlimi's arrival there could be no question that the event had been engineered at a very high level indeed, in order to prevent the court delivering its verdicts. For had those present been convicted or acquitted last week, the court would then have pronounced judgment on those absent and in accordance with French law those absent receive the maximum sentence. Thus in all probability General Oufkir, the Moroccan Minister of the Interior, Colonel Dlimi and the other five accomplices would have been sentenced for life. The political conse- quences of such a verdict on Franco-Moroccan relations can best be imagined. It had to be avoided at all costs. For the time being, at any rate, it has been staved off and in all likelihood will never be pronounced.
If the secret services were responsible for Ben Barka's arrest and kidnapping, the affair will now be settled by secret diplomacy. Within one hour of Dlimi's arrival and surrender, the president of the court had no option but to declare the trial postponed, pending the results of the supplemen- tary investigation Which his arrival entailed. In addition, Dlimi lost no time in filing an appeal with the High Court of France on the grounds that in accordance with the Franco-Moroccan Juridical Convention, Moroccans cannot be tried before French courts and that therefore the Seine Assize Court is not competent to judge either Dlimi or Oufkir.
For the High Court to consider this appeal will take several weeks; in the meantime, Dlimi can- not even be interrogated. If the High Court re- jects the appeal, then the whole trial must begin all over again with a new jury. If on the other hand the appeal is accepted, a lengthy debate, possibly extending well into next year, will then take place between French and Moroccan legal experts as to what is the exact meaning of the Franco-Moroccan convention. If the Moroccans win, the French government must send the whole dossier to Rabat where the Moroccans involved may or may not be brought to trial.
What is the significance of all this? Put bluntly, it means that the chances of any French court bringing out the truth about Ben Barka's disappearance are now practically nil. It means too that if ever the trial does reopen with Dlimi in the dock, it will be after the French parliamentary elections next spring. Thirdly, it is now known that if Dlimi ever were brought to trial, he would present an absolutely water- tight case to prove that he and Oufkir had absolutely nothing to do with Ben Barka's pre- sumed murder—because when he and Oufkir arrived in France on the day after the kidnapping (brought off by the French police) Ben Barka was already dead. The most they could be accused of would be of hushing up the crime. But then was this not in the best interests of France herself? And did not the French govern- ment, when the facts were known, try to settle the question by a diplomatic mission sent to Morocco last November, while the police inquiry was suspended by government order?
Why, it may be asked, was it not hushed up then in the first place? The reason is that the French government had sent its demands to Morocco in the form of an ultimatum—Oufkir was to be dismissed and Moroccan responsibility
was to be accepted. King Hassan was furious. He took this ultimatum as an act of revenge for his increasingly close ties with the United States and West Germany. The king refused to accept the terms and the French retaliated by letting the police inquiry go ahead. In February de Gaulle publicly accused Oufkir. Meanwhile the French political parties, both left and right, with an eye on the forthcoming elections, seized on the revelations of the trial to discredit the de Gaulle regime.
By the sixth week of the trial, the French Government had had enough. A series of subtle exchanges were initiated between Rabat and Paris and it was agreed on both sides to save the situation by invoking the Franco-Moroccan Juridical Convention. Thus the criminal aspect of the Ben Barka affair will be replaced by a more respectable legal controversy, allowing ten- sion between the two countries to subside and public interest to flag. At a later (much later) and more propitious moment, the trial may be reopened and the existing accused judged.
And the missing man himself? If by then he or his body has not been discovered, the court will be told that while the police forces of both countries—for the highest political motives—did have a plan to kidnap him, his blood is not on their hands.
Whether this curious mixture of Realpolitik and face-saving will work to the best interests of all concerned is difficult to predict. One thing, however, is certain : the affair could not be allowed to take its own downhill course. As Allal El Fassi, the leader of Morocco's Istiqlal party, said at Geneva on his way to Mecca last week : 'France has blundered badly in this affair. What- ever the truth in regard to Ben Barka's dis- appearance, politics have been brought to play in the law courts. And the affair represents a real danger to Franco-Moroccan relations.' A proof of this: twenty-four hours before the ver- dict was postponed, some of the 100,000 French settlers still in Morocco had already packed up and headed for the airports.
'An' it all goes into the laundry But it never comes out in the wash . .
—Rudyard Kipling.
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