FRANCE SURPRISE WITNESS

Document Type: 
Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP75-00149R000100350012-3
Release Decision: 
RIPPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
1
Document Creation Date: 
December 9, 2016
Document Release Date: 
February 1, 1999
Sequence Number: 
12
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
October 28, 1966
Content Type: 
MAGAZINE
File: 
AttachmentSize
PDF icon CIA-RDP75-00149R000100350012-3.pdf91.99 KB
Body: 
Approved For Release 2001/ 6" ltl CPYRGHT FRANCE Surprise Witness Who kidnaped e t en a~ r a: t is almost exactly a year since the d - minutive exiled Moroccan leftist lea - er vanished from a street in Sain - Germain-des-Pres. For the past seven I weeks the knotty mystery of his disa pcarance has been unraveling in a Par court. All the evidence confirms t likelihood that he stepped willingly int a black Peugeot and was whisked t a villa in a Paris suburb because h P DLIMI UNDER ARREST Brilliant ploy. believed that envoys of his old politic.1 enemy, Morocco's King Hassan 11, we trying to contact him with an offer t > ~ return home for a reconciliation wit the King. Ben Barka was later hande over to two Moroccans at the villa an i was never seen again. In the dock were five Frcncnmc -a journalist, two policemen an I two secret agents-and one small-tim Moroccan. police operative. All wai charged with either participation complicity in the kidnaping. The tw most wanted men were out of reach cif French law. They were Morocco's Ii terior Minister Brigadier General M hamed Oufkir and his deputy for secre police matters, Ahmed Dlimi. Wi nesses named them as the Moroccans who had met Ben Barka at the villi. King Hassan flatly refused to hand them over for trial. In fact, he had bee working feverishly behind the scenes t block the proceedings. Emissaries ha l approached Charles de Gaulle himsel pleading that the affair would put blight on Franco-Moroccan relation Hassan argued' in vain, for De Gaull ; ta00149RAp010g350Qr7 3 ra1_l_U l l I I 't-Y -lull. ~ an himself decided to intervene, and e chose an ingenious way to do it.. ast week Dlimi, his secret-police aide, oarded a Royal Air Maroc Caravelle n Casablanca and flew-suitably dis- uised and with a fake passport-to aris. The next afternoon, just as the rial of the six defendants was drawing o a close, Dlimi calmly showed up at he court and surrendered to French ~_ithoritics. was a brilliant ploy. The trial had rogresscd beyond the point where new cstimony could conveniently be intro- uced; yet no court could ignore this urprise witness. Accepting the prose- ution's motion, the judge ordered a ew trial, This, of course, would need tonths to prepare-if it ever took lace. Rumors spread that Charles de aulle might be less than happy to ave the trial commence again, since limi might name the anonymous high- anking French officials who, accord- ng to trial witnesses, gave the go-ahead or French police and security agents o cooperate in catching Ben Barka for he Moroccans. VIP Treatment. Nor was there any' ssurance that Dlimi himself would ever ace a French judge. No sooner had he urrendered than a bevy of Hassan's and-picked lawyers arrived in Paris to ile a motion with France's Supreme ourt invoking the Franco-Moroccan udicial convention of 1956. Under that grecment, French and Moroccan na- ionals must be tried in their national ourts for offenses committed in the ther country. It would also be months efore the French court could rule on hat motion. In the meantime, Dlimi as comfortably ensconced in a VIP ell at Paris' Santo Prison, and l'a,(/aire en Barka was whore King Hassan anted it-hopelessly enmeshed in end- ess legal tangles._ ,_ _ ....... Approved For Release 2001107126 : CIA-RDP75-00149R000100350012-3