Word: barka
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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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...
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...
...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...
...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...
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...