Moroccan opposition leader Mehdi ben Barka may have been a double agent, declassified cold war files suggest

Based on declassified documents from the Czechoslovak intelligence services, the former Moroccan socialist leader, Mehdi Ben Barka, in the midst of the Cold War, provided information to the Czechoslovak security service in return for substantial payments, UK news outlet, The Guardian reports.

At around noon on 29 October 1965, Mehdi ben Barka, Moroccan opposition leader and hero of the international left, was abducted as he arrived at a brasserie on Paris’s left bank.

Over the years, different stories of the truth about the murder of the 46-year-old dissident have emerged. However, many of Ben Barka’s activities before his death have remained shrouded in mystery.

New research in the previously classified files from Prague has revealed that Ben Barka not only had a close relationship with the Státní Bezpečnost (StB), the feared Czechoslovak security service, but that he received substantial payments from it, both in cash and in-kind.

The document pictured Ben Barka who is often depicted as a fighter against colonial interests and for the third world, as a man who was playing many sides, as “an opportunist who was playing a very dangerous game,” said Dr. Jan Koura, an assistant professor at Charles University in Prague, who gained access to the file.

The documents reveal that Ben Berka received several payments from StB for submitting information about Iraq, Egypt, and Algeria.

Despite suspecting Ben Berka’s collaboration with China and the CIA, after receiving a payment check from Beijing and meeting with CIA agents in Paris, StB intelligence kept its connection with the Moroccan political as they found his reports “highly valuable.”

“Ben Barka never admitted that he was collaborating [with intelligence services], and the StB never listed him as an agent, just as a “confidential contact”. But he was providing information, and was paid,” Koura said.
The motives of Ben Barka, a committed activist who was arrested and imprisoned repeatedly in Morocco, remain unclear.

Following the new findings, the former Moroccan leader’s son. Bachir Ben Barka, who currently lives in France, told the Observer that his father’s relationships with socialists and other states were simply those to be expected of anyone deeply engaged in the global struggle against imperialism and colonial exploitation at the time.

He added that the documents studied by Koura had been “produced by an intelligence service, so perhaps they were edited or incomplete” to shine a negative light on his father’s Cold War connections and activities.

Ben Barka’s fate remains the subject of speculation, as various intelligence services including the Moroccan secret services, CIA, Mossad, and French intelligence have all been blamed for his abduction and death.