Word: barka
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...kidnaped Mehdi Ben Barka? It is almost exactly a year since the diminutive exiled Moroccan leftist leader vanished from a street in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. For the past several weeks the knotty mystery of his disappearance has been unraveling in a Paris court. All the evidence confirms the likelihood that he stepped willingly into a black Peugeot and was whisked to a villa in a Paris suburb because he believed that envoys of his old political enemy, Morocco's King Hassan II, were trying to contact him with an offer to return home for a reconciliation...
...Mohammed Oufkir as he bent to kiss the hand of his monarch. King Hassan II had just expressed complete confidence in the hawk-faced general, and angrily denied French charges that Oufkir had had anything to do with the mysterious kidnaping and supposed murder of Leftist Leader Mehdi Ben Barka. All very stirring, but on closer inspection it developed that the tears in Oufkir's eyes were caused not by gratitude but rather by a cataract usually hidden behind his sunglasses...
Like Oufkir's tears, nothing in the Ben Barka case was as simple as it appeared last week. The irate indignation of France and Morocco, expressed by a reciprocal recall of ambassadors, was not followed up by a severance of diplomatic relations-indeed, both Paris and Rabat took care not to aggravate the situation. France still demanded Oufkir's arrest; Morocco refused it. While King Hassan maintained complete silence on the crucial matter of Oufkir's whereabouts on the October weekend that Ben Barka disappeared...
That left the question of who kidnaped Ben Barka just where it had been before: wildly up in the air. Key witnesses to the Left Bank snatch were still in hiding or not talking or dead or simply unidentifiable. Gaullist Deputy Pierre Lemarchand-a close friend of Figon and French Interior Minister Roger Frey, and himself one of the barbouzes (bearded ones) who serve as De Gaulle's super-CIA-testified before an investigating magistrate that a handful of French cops had accepted $200,000 from the Moroccans for helping kidnap Ben Barka, but insisted that neither Frey...
...leftist, and at the same time embarrass De Gaulle. The fact remains that four of the five persons so far in custody for the kidnaping are Frenchmen. That blatant bit of embarrassment must have struck someone in the Elysee Palace last week, for suddenly Paris began "wondering" if Ben Barka was really dead. After all, his body has yet to turn...