We understand that French Judge Jean-Baptiste Parlos, who is investigating Mr. Ben Barka's "disappearance," sent to the minister of defense on September 21 a request to declassify all files pertaining to the case. His request follows the decision taken by that minister in 2000 to release certain files while refusing to release others on the grounds that they contained "defense secrets."
Mr. Ben Barka was a leader of the Moroccan opposition and the Third-Worldist non-aligned movement. In 1965 he was living in exile. 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 have been carried out by Moroccan secret police, although many details remain unknown.
According to statements made to the press earlier this year by Ahmed Boukhari, a retired Moroccan secret policeman, Moroccan agents killed Ben Barka while interrogating him in a villa south of Paris, in the presence of then-Minister of Interior Mohamed Oufkir and his deputy Ahmed Dlimi, director of National Security. The agents then flew his body back to Morocco, where on October 31 they dissolved it in a vat of acid at the Dar el-Mokri police station in Rabat. None of the Moroccan agents allegedly involved was ever punished, either in France or Morocco. However, a French court convicted Mr. Oufkir in absentia and acquitted Mr. Dlimi.
Mr. Boukhari's revelations, first published in Le Monde and the Moroccan Le Journal Hebdomadaire on June 29 and 30, 2001, have fueled demands within Morocco's civil society that their national authorities, as well as foreign intelligence agencies, disclose the information necessary to solve this crime committed on French soil, and identify all those who were complicit in it. Mr. Boukhari also contended that agents of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency were aware on a daily basis of the activities of the Moroccan secret police at the time. Today, we are addressing a letter similar to this one asking U.S. authorities to declassify its files pertaining to Mr. Ben Barka's "disappearance."
Regrettably, Mr. Boukhari has been prevented from complying with a subpoena to testify in Paris on September 7 that was issued by judge Parlos. Mr. Boukhari has been jailed in Morocco since August 13 on charges of writing bad checks. Whatever the basis for the charges, the handling of his prosecution and trial make clear that they were motivated by a desire to punish Boukhari for having become, six weeks earlier, the first Moroccan secret policeman ever to talk in detail about the "dirty war" waged against dissidents in the 1960s and 1970s.
We fail to see any justification for withholding on national security grounds documents relating to Mr. Ben Barka's "disappearance" thirty-six years ago. At the time, French officials denied any role in the abduction or knowledge of its preparation. French policemen who were implicated were dismissed as rogue elements; at least two of them were convicted and imprisoned. The failure to declassify documents now only fuels speculation that they contain evidence that high-level French officials may have known in advance about, or assisted in, the abduction of Mr. Ben Barka and the evacuation of his body from France.
The declassification of all pertinent files would honor France's commitment to combating the crime of enforced disappearance, well illustrated by years of your country's sponsorship of United Nations resolutions on the issue and its excellent work earlier this year in starting the process of drafting the International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
The Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, adopted by the General Assembly in 1992, states in Article 13, "Whenever there are reasonable grounds to believe that an enforced disappearance has been committed, the State shall promptly refer the matter to [the competent] authority for … investigation. No measure shall be taken to curtail or impede the investigation. Each State shall ensure that the competent authority shall have the necessary powers and resources to conduct the investigation effectively, including powers to compel…production of relevant documents…."
The Resolution also states in Article 17(1) that "Acts constituting enforced disappearance shall be considered a continuing offence as long as the perpetrators continue to conceal the fate and the whereabouts of persons who have disappeared and these facts remain unclarified."
We believe it incumbent on the French authorities to reveal all information in their possession, not only to aid the judicial investigation under way in France but also to assist the search for truth under way by actors in Morocco's civil society. Many Moroccans believe, rightly in our view, that the consolidation of the rule of law in Morocco depends in part on achieving truth, acknowledgment and accountability regarding the grave abuses of human rights committed in past years by Moroccan authorities. These include the enforced disappearance of Mr. Ben Barka, as well of hundreds of other suspected political activists in Morocco whose fate remains unknown to this day.
We thank you for your consideration and look forward to your response.
Sincerely yours,
Michel Tubiana
Président
Ligue des Droits de l'Homme
Sidiki Kaba
Président
FIDH
Hanny Megally
Executive Director
Middle East and North Africa division
Human Rights Watch
Ligue Francaise des droits de l'Homme
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tel. +33 1 56 55 51 00
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e-mail ldh@wanadoo.fr
International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH)
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Tel: +33143552518
Fax: +33143551880
e-mail: fidh@fidh.org
Human Rights Watch
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Tel: +1 212 216 1200
Fax: +1 212 736 1300
Email: mena@hrw.org
