Morocco’s CNDH to Publish Report on Ben Barka Assassination By December

Rabat – Morocco’s National Human Rights Council (CNDH) is reportedly moving forward to publish a new report on the 1965 kidnapping and assignation of the Moroccan opposition leader Mehdi Ben Barka.

Earlier this week, the Secretary General of the Socialist Union of Popular Forces Party (USFP), Driss Lachgar submitted an enquiry to CNDH President, Driss El Yazami, regarding the new data that the council has collected over the Ben Barka Affair.

A statement by USFP published on the party’s official website said that El Yazami promised to disclose new information on the disappearance of Ben Barka, in a new report due to be published next December.

According to the statement, Driss El Yazami said the report will includes all cases that are similar to Ben Barka’s case. The goal of this approach will be to open a public debate over mysterious enforced disappearances in Morocco.

On Tuesday, MPs observed a minute of silence during the House of Representatives’ weekly session, in memory of Mehdi Ben Barka, who was kidnapped and assassinated in Paris on October 29, 1965.

The exact circumstances of Ben Barka’s disappearance are still a mystery to the public and his body has never been found.

Ben Barka’s family has for long demanded that Moroccan and French authorities unveil the truth over the circumstances that surrounded his assassination. Ben Barka was one of the founding father of the leftist movement in Morocco and a Secretary General of the Tricontinental Conference.