| October
26, 2001
Dear Secretary Powell,
We are writing
to urge you to support the declassification of all U.S. government
documents relating to the abduction and enforced disappearance
of Moroccan opposition leader Mehdi Ben Barka in Paris thirty-six
years ago, on October 29, 1965.
In 1976,
U.S. authorities refused on national security grounds to make
such documents available in response to a Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) request filed by Mr. Ben Barka's son Bachir. However,
new information about the possible role of the Central Intelligence
Agency in the case underscores the need for such a disclosure.
Interested
parties will in coming days submit a new FOIA request to the
U.S. government for materials relating to Mr. Ben Barka's disappearance.
We believe that lifting the secrecy surrounding the CIA's past
role in Morocco would demonstrate a commitment to promoting
human rights in the region and to re-examining U.S. acquiescence
and possible complicity in grave violations committed by an
ally.
The new
information about the CIA's role comes from Ahmed Boukhari,
the first Moroccan secret police agent ever to publicly detail
the "dirty war" waged against dissidents in the 1960s
and 1970s. According to Mr. Boukhari's revelations, first published
in Le Monde and the Moroccan Journal Hebdomadaire on June 29
and 30, CIA agents who were stationed at the headquarters of
the Secret Police in Rabat had broad access to police records
and were kept informed of police operations on a daily basis.
One CIA agent helped to design a large steel vat to hold acid,
in which the police dissolved the bodies of abducted dissidents,
Mr. Boukhari said.
Mr. Boukhari,
now retired, also provided answers to the mystery of what happened
to Mehdi Ben Barka. A leader of the Moroccan socialist party
and the Third-World-based non-aligned movement, Mr. Ben Barka
was living in exile in 1965. At mid-day on October 29, witnesses
watched as he was stopped by two French policemen on the Boulevard
St. Germain in Paris, escorted to a police vehicle, and driven
away. He was never seen again. The abduction has long been presumed
to be the work of Moroccan secret police, although important
details remain unknown.
According
to Mr. Boukhari, Mr. Ben Barka died while being interrogated
in a villa south of Paris by Moroccan agents, in the presence
of then-Minister of Interior Mohamed Oufkir and his deputy,
Ahmed Dlimi, the director of national security. The agents then
flew his body back to Morocco, where on October 31 they dissolved
it in the above-mentioned vat of acid, housed in the Dar el-Mokri
police station in Rabat.
None of
the Moroccan agents allegedly involved were ever punished for
their role in the abduction, either in France or Morocco. However,
a French court convicted Mr. Oufkir in absentia and acquitted
Mr. Dlimi.
According
to Mr. Boukhari, three CIA agents, who went by the names "Colonel
Steve," "Colonel Martin," and "Colonel Scott,"
had been working closely with the Secret Police since 1960.
"Colonel Martin," assigned to the powerful Counter-Subversion
bureau, followed the plan to abduct Mr. Ben Barka since its
adoption in March 1965, Boukhari stated. "Colonel Martin"
would have learned of Mr. Ben Barka's death in France very shortly
after it occurred, and also of the plan to secretly transport
his body back to Morocco.
With respect
to the vat of acid, Mr. Boukhari stated that he himself commissioned
construction of the five-foot-tall stainless steel vessel in
1961, pursuant to instructions and a sketch that "Colonel
Martin" gave him. "Colonel Martin" allegedly
told Mr. Boukhari he had seen such a vat in use in Iran, where
he had been posted in the 1950s.
In the four
months since Mr. Boukhari started speaking publicly, nothing
has come to light to undermine the credibility of his testimony.
Regrettably, Moroccan authorities reacted to the disclosures
not by launching a judicial investigation into the grave crimes
that Mr. Boukhari attributed to state agents, but rather by
prosecuting him on charges of writing bad checks. Whatever the
merits of those charges, the handling of the prosecution and
trial leaves little doubt that authorities are using the case
to punish Mr. Boukhari for speaking out, and to intimidate other
potential whistle-blowers. He is currently serving a three-month
sentence and is due to be released November 13.
Mr. Boukhari's
revelations have fueled demands within Morocco's civil society
that their government, as well as foreign intelligence agencies,
disclose the information that might elucidate the "disappearance"
of Mr. Ben Barka, as well hundreds of other "disappearances"
of political activists in Morocco whose fate remains unknown
to this day.
Citing Mr.
Boukhari's testimony, the Moroccan Human Rights Association
and the Moroccan Human Rights Organization, both based in Rabat,
wrote a joint letter to President Bush on July 16, asking the
president to order the declassification of files pertaining
to the CIA's alleged relation to human rights abuses in Morocco.
Such an act, they said, would "enable the victims and their
survivors to learn the truth, enable the judicial system to
apply the law, and enable all parties concerned to put in place
norms and legal, political, and social mechanisms to safeguard
against the recurrence of these criminal acts." In the
spirit of their letter, which has as yet received no response,
we are also addressing a letter today to Prime Minister Lionel
Jospin, asking him to order the declassification of all French
files pertaining to the Ben Barka affair.
In 1976,
the CIA informed Mr. Ben Barka's son Bachir that it possessed
1,846 documents pertaining to his father, before refusing on
national security grounds to declassify them. Today, we do not
see how releasing these documents about events that occurred
nearly four decades ago will harm national security.
We note
that former President Clinton ordered the declassification of
documents related to human rights abuses Guatemala, in response
to a request by that country's Historical Clarification Commission.
The Clinton administration made clear that this action was
intended both as an acknowledgement of regrettable past policies
as well as a contribution toward promoting democracy and the
rule of law.
We believe
that the same logic should be applied to U.S. archives concerning
Morocco, where the search for truth and accountability concerning
past repression is a priority of civil society as it tries to
build a more democratic future.
We thank
you for your consideration and look forward to your reply.
Sincerely
yours,
Hanny
Megally
Executive Director
Middle East and North Africa Division
Human Rights Watch
Sidiki
Kaba
President
International Federation of Human Rights
Human
Rights Watch (HRW)
350 Fifth
Avenue, 34th Floor
New York, NY 10118
Tel. +1 212 290 4700
Fax 212 736 1300
e-mail: hrwnyc@hrw.org
International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH)
17, Passage
de la Main d'Or - F-75011 Paris, France
Tel: +33143552518
Fax: +33143551880
e-mail: fidh@fidh.org
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