Mohammed Oufkir

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General Mohammed Oufkir ( Arabic محمد أوفقير, Central Atlas Tamazight ⵎⵓⵃⵎⵎⴷ ⵓⴼⵇⵉⵔ Muḥammed Ufqir ; also Ufkir ; * September 29, 1920 in Aïn Chaïr, Meknès-Tafilalet ; † August 16, 1972 in Rabat ) was a Moroccan minister of interior and defense .

Life

His father Ahmed Oufkir († 1928), a Berber, was appointed pasha by Hubert Lyautey in 1910 . Oufkir became a captain in the French army , in which he was used in the Indochina War.

His behavior in the Rif uprising in 1958 and during the events in Casablanca of March 23, 1965 earned him the reputation of the butcher. The French government enforced its participation in the government of Mohammed V one day after Morocco gained independence on March 3, 1956. As intended by the French government, he reduced the influence of the armée de liberation nationale marocaine , let the people vote on the legitimacy of parties such as the Istiqlal and Union socialiste des forces populaires , and established a police and surveillance regime.

In 1965, Mohammed Oufkir asked the Mossad to help him silence Ben Barka . Meir Amit agreed, and in October 1965 Ben Barka was lured from Switzerland to Paris by two members of the intelligence service . Under the direction of Antoine Lopez, head of the branch of Air France at Paris-Orly, personal friend of Mohamed Oufkir and employees of the Service de Documentation Extérieur et de Contre-Espionage rendierten the head of the "Brigade Mondaine" ( drug-related crime and prostitution ) in of the police prefecture, Commissioner Louis Souchon (* 1916 was sentenced to six years in prison), and Roger Voitot (* 1928) in a civilian Peugeot 403 of the police prefecture Ben Barka to the villa of the pimp and head of the Barbouzes , Georges Boucheseiche in Fontenay-le-Vicomte . The Barbouzes held Ben Barka in the villa under the pretext of a meeting with a high-ranking representative of the French government until Ahmed Dlimi and later Mohammed Oufkir came to the villa on Saturday, October 30, 1965 . Oufkir tortured Ben Barka until the latter gave him a power of attorney for his safe in a bank in Geneva . On the morning of October 31, 1965, Oufkir flew to Geneva and removed Ben Barka's archive from the bank safe. Oufkir then visited his family in Gstaad . From Tuesday, November 2, 1965 to Friday, November 5, 1965, Oufkir was on an official mission in Paris. On November 3, 1965, Oufkir attended a cocktail reception at the French Ministry of the Interior to celebrate the completion of a traineeship for senior Moroccan officials with the French administration. Jacques Foccart and Interior Minister Roger Frey were informed about the involvement of Oufkirs in the Ben Barka case, which is why Frey was represented by Jacques Hector Auguste Aubert (born August 6, 1913 in Cherbourg ). At the reception, Oufkir met Commissaire divisionnaire Maurice Marcel Louis Bouvier (born April 6, 1920 in Nogent-le-Roi ; † July 23, 2009), who was in charge of investigating the disappearance of Ben Barkas.

Oufkir was convicted in absentia of murder by a Paris court on June 5, 1967, while General Ahmed Dlimi who was present was acquitted, suggesting that the court was inconsistent in its assessment of the evidence. The pending arrest warrant for Oufkir was no longer pursued in France after Georges Pompidou was elected president in 1969. Oufikir came to Lyon regularly for medical eye treatments and in September 1972 Maurice Schumann shook hands with him on a state visit to Morocco.

In 1967 Oufkir became minister of the interior and increasingly indispensable for the oppressive regime of Hassan II. Oufkir had trade unions and religious institutions monitored. He had any political protest suppressed by force. The government of Hassan II had the population spied on and did not limit the repression to legal measures, but abducted and murdered numerous people.

The attempted coup of Skhirat on the birthday of Hassan II., July 10, 1971 spent Oufkir with Hassan II. And the Thronrat in a restroom of the palace. He was hired by Hassan II to lead the persecution of the conspirators, became Chief of Staff and Minister of Defense in the government of Mohammed Karim Lamrani .

On August 16, 1972, during a coup attempt in Morocco, five Northrop F-5s of the Forces Armées Royales intercepted the Boeing 727 with Hassan II on its return flight from Paris and shot at the aircraft. The Boeing pilot, Mohammed Kabbej, reported over the radio that the king was dead and landed the damaged machine in Rabat. The pilots of the F-5 took a helicopter and disappeared to Gibraltar, where they asked for political asylum. Colonel Amokrane, one of the assassins, explicitly named General Oufkir as the man behind the attack. Hassan II then ordered Mohammad Oufkir to the palace, had him killed by Ahmed Dlimi and Hafid Alouni, his chief of protocol, and then it was spread that Oufkir (by shooting in the liver, lungs, stomach, back and throat ) Committed suicide.

Oufkir was married and had 6 children. After the attack, Hassan II kept Oufkir's family in secret prisons in the desert until 1991. After five years of constant police surveillance, the family fled to France. Oufkir's daughter Malika Oufkir reports in her book Die Gefangene. A life in Morocco (original title: La prisonnière ) about this event. His wife Fatima and his son Raouf also reported about this time.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Malika Oufkir. In: Bladi.net. Retrieved September 1, 2019 (French).
  2. ↑ Malika Oufkir. In: Bladi.net. Retrieved September 1, 2019 (French).
  3. ^ The Daily Telegraph , July 22, 2009, Major-General Meir Amit
  4. ↑ False beards . In: Der Spiegel . No. 5 , 1966 ( online ).
  5. ↑ Jacques-Aubert
  6. ↑ Gilles Perrault , Our Friend the King of Morocco, Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag , Leipzig, 1992 p. 120 f.
  7. ↑ Time , Oct. 28, 1966, Surprise Witness
  8. ↑ Perrault 1992, p. 122 ff.
  9. ↑ Perrault, 1992 p. 126
  10. ↑ Perrault, 1992 p. 150
  11. ↑ Malika Oufkir with Michèle Fitoussi : The prisoner. A life in Morocco (original title: La prisonnière, translated by Christiane Filius-Jehne), by Schröder, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-547-77248-6 ; as paperback: Ullstein TB 36249, Munich 2003, ISBN 978-3-548-36249-6 .
personal data
SURNAME Oufkir, Mohammed
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Oufkir, Mohammad
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Moroccan politician, Minister of the Interior and Defense of Morocco
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Aïn Chaïr, Meknes-Tafilalet
DATE OF DEATH August 16, 1972
Place of death Rabat