Word: oufkir
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...part-time informer for the French and Moroccan secret services, one ranking French secret-service official, one Moroccan cop and one journalist who was also a police informer. They also implicated four French underworld types they could not lay their hands on and Moroccan Interior Minister Mohamed Oufkir and his deputy, Ahmed Dlimi, who were both safe at home...
...Justice. Judges and jury were harangued by 15 lawyers and deluged with more than 5,000 documents. Last week the trial finally came to a halt. Only two defendants drew any significant rap: the part-time secret-service agent got eight years in prison; a vice-squad cop six. Oufkir, still safe in Morocco, was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment, as were the four French gangsters who are still on the lam. Colonel Dlimi, who dramatically surrendered to French police during the trial, was acquitted along with the remaining defendants...
...Frenchmen-a journalist, two policemen and two secret agents-and one small-time Moroccan police operative. All were charged with either participation or complicity in the kidnaping. The two most wanted men were out of reach of French law. They were Morocco's Interior Minister Brigadier General Mohamed Oufkir and his deputy for secret-police matters, Ahmed Dlimi. Witnesses named them as the Moroccans who had met Ben Barka at the villa. King Hassan flatly refused to hand them over for trial. In fact, he had been working feverishly behind the scenes to block the proceedings. Emissaries had approached...
Tears streamed down the cheeks of Moroccan Interior Minister 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...