Word: chaker
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Dates: during 1957-1957
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...back to Paris at once. The FLN leaders also wanted broader consultations, particularly with Leader Mohammed ben Bella, who is in Paris' Sante prison (see below). They took their problem to Premier Bourguiba, who suggested that he send Ben Bella's Tunisian friend and lawyer, Abdel Majid Chaker, to Paris to ask the jailed FLN leader: "What do you think of eventual negotiations with France?" Chaker would bring back an oral response, and the FLN could take it from there...
Unknown to each other, Observer Goëau-Brissonnière and Lawyer Chaker caught the same Air France plane. At Paris' Orly Airport the French diplomat was greeted with a message that his car was waiting for him. Chaker was stopped by a plainclothesman who flashed papers and said, "Follow me." Interrogated that night, Chaker was charged next morning with "threatening the foreign security of the state." Unaware that a representative of the Paris government had been secretly talking with the FLN, somebody in French intelligence had got wind of Chaker's mission to Ben Bella...
Deeds & Denials. As soon as the French realized their mistake, they apologized to Chaker, bound him to secrecy in the interest of furthering the negotiations. But Tunisian papers, angry at Chaker's arrest, broke the story; Paris' leftist press picked it up and soon all France was reading about the secret negotiations for peace...
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