Word: hassan
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Barka, a shadowy, diminutive Moroccan émigré who had fled his native land for nomadic exile around the Mediterranean six years ago. The founder of Morocco's leftist National Union of Popular Forces Party, he was twice sentenced to death in absentia for plotting to overthrow King Hassan II. Someone wanted that sentence carried out, at home or abroad -and, to many, the most likely someone was Hassan's rightist Interior Minister, Mohamed Oufkir. Apart from Oufkir's fierce hatred of Ben Barka, there had been rumors of an impending reconciliation between the King...
...masterminded the kidnaping of Mehdi ben Barka, 45, the leftist Moroccan exile who disappeared in Paris late last month? French police thought they knew, and the name of the suspect was enough to throw a severe chill into Franco-Moroccan relations. For the suspect was King Hassan II's own Minister of the Interior, General Mohamed Oufkir...
...Paris at the time of Ben Barka's disappearance not for the reason he gave -that he was taking his children to their Swiss boarding school. Instead, the cops said, he had come to oversee the abduction. The police also established a motive: in his dickerings with King Hassan for a rapprochement between the palace and Moroccan leftists, Ben Barka had demanded Oufkir's dismissal as one of the conditions...
...least one important Frenchman seemed convinced of the police's suspicions. Charles de Gaulle summoned his ambassador from Rabat to carry back to Hassan a personal message of his concern over the violation of French sovereignty. The implication was clear enough: Oufkir should be fired. From his palace in Fez, the King released a statement denouncing the French police charges as a plot to disgrace Morocco, and expressing his confidence in his ministers-a sign that he was not about to buckle under to French demands. With that, Hassan canceled a trip to Paris, where he was to have...
...Morocco's leftists, the French charges seemed to confirm the suspicions that they had felt all along-that Ben Barka had fallen prey to a right-wing conspiracy not only against the leftists but against Hassan as well. At week's end the Union Marocaine du Travail called a one-day strike in protest against the government's refusal to pursue a full investigation. The King called out troops in both Rabat and Casablanca to keep the strike from turning into full-blown riots...