Bachir Ben Barka wrote a letter this week during France’s President Emmanuel Macron’s state visit to Morocco to both Morocco’s King Mohammed VI and Macron asking them to “make the necessary decisions” to lift the veil of secrecy regarding the disappearance of his father, Mehdi Ben Barka, 59 years ago in Paris on October 29, 1965.
Ben Barka’s eldest son drafted the letter which was provided to the OrientXXI magazine on Monday, the day before the 59th anniversary of his father’s disappearance. In it, he requests that the French government declassify documents relating to his father’s disappearance as it has done for others whom France has belatedly acknowledged responsibility for their kidnapping or disappearance.
Mehdi Ben Barka, a prominent figure in the anti-colonialist movement during the French protectorate in Morocco, was the head of the left-wing National Union of Popular Forces (UNFP) during the reign of King Hassan II.
He stood out for having been one of the few middle-class Moroccan citizens who was able to access a formal education at a time when education was a privilege of the colonial bourgeoisie. 59 years ago on Tuesday, he was kidnapped at a brasserie on Paris’s left bank. The case was never resolved, and his body was never recovered.
In his letter, Bachir makes an impassioned plea that his family has never received closure following Mehdi’s death, does not even know where he is buried, and despite legal proceedings in the French justice system, is still waiting for French authorities to reveal “the complete truth” of his disappearance.
“The dearest wish of my mother, Rhita Bennani, the widow of Mehdi Ben Barka,” he wrote, “was to be able to visit the grave of her husband and the father of her children. Four months ago, she passed away without having fulfilled that wish. Her nearly sixty-year struggle for truth and justice remains unfinished.”
Bachir urged Morocco and France to uncover the truth and conclude the case “so that the truth is established in broad daylight and justice is done.”