Mehdi Ben Barka

Mehdi Ben Barka was born January 1920 into a middle class family in Rabat; his father Ahmed Ben M'hammed Ben Barka was at the beginning of his career, serving as personal secretary of the Pasha of Tangier, before becoming a businessman in Rabat, and his mother Lalla Fatouma Bouanane, was a stay-at-home mother.

He was one of the very few Moroccan children not from the colonial bourgeoisie to have access to a good education.

He studied at Collège Moulay Youssef in Rabat, among the children of the colons and the city's nobility, where he joined the drama club and excelled in his studies.

Meanwhile, in addition to his studies, he worked as a simple accountant at the wholesale market to help his family.

In response to the Berber Dahir of May 16, 1930, which placed Amazigh populations under the jurisdiction of the French authorities, 14-year-old Mehdi Ben Barka joined the Comité d'action marocaine, the first political movement born under the protectorate.

His outstanding academic performance attracted the attention of the French Résident Général Charles Noguès, who sent him along with other distinguished students on a trip to Paris.

He earned his first diploma in 1938 with high honors at a time when Morocco only produced about 20 or so graduates of baccalauréat secondary school programs per year.

He studied at Lycée Lyautey in Casablanca from 1938 to 1939, and received his baccalauréat diploma in mathematics in 1939.

As a 17-year-old, he became one of the youngest members of Allal al-Fassi's National Party for the Realization of Reforms (الحركة الوطنية لتحقيق الإصلاحات), which would become the Istiqlal Party a few years later.

Though he wanted to complete his studies in France, the outbreak of World War II forced him to continue his studies in mathematics at the University of Algiers, also under French control in 1940, instead.

He earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics and became the first Moroccan to do so at an official French school.

The Algerian People's Party influenced him to broaden the scale of his nationalism to incorporate all of North Africa.

He could not disassociate the fate of Morocco from the fate of the entire Maghreb.

Ben Barka returned to Morocco in 1942.

At 23 years old, as the first Moroccan Muslim graduate in mathematics of an official French school, he became a professor at the Royal Academy (المدرسة المولوية, Collège Royal), where the future king of Morocco Hassan II was one of his students.

He participated in the creation of the Istiqlal Party, which would play a major role in Morocco's independence.

He was the youngest signatory of the Proclamation of Independence of Morocco of January 11, 1944.

His signature got him arrested along with other party leaders, and he spent more than a year in prison.

cites Ben Barka as having participated—along with Ahmed Balafrej,, Mohamed Laghzaoui, and —in the creation of the newspaper Al-Alam in 1946.

According to Mohammed Lahbabi of the USFP, Mehdi Ben Barka prepared the Tangier Speech delivered by Sultan Muhammad V April 10, 1947.

He also remained an activist in the nationalist movement, to the extent that the French General Alphonse Juin described him as the "enemy #1 of France in Morocco.” Mehdi Ben Barka was put on house arrest February 1951. In 1955, he participated in the negotiations that led to the return of Muhammad V, who French authorities had ousted and exiled, and to the end of the French protectorate.

He left the Istiqlal Party in 1959 after clashes with conservative opponents to found the left-wing National Union of Popular Forces (UNFP).

He authored al-Ikhtiyār ath-Thawrī fī l-Maghrib (الاختيار الثوري في المغرب, L’option révolutionnaire au Maroc—"The Revolutionary Option in Morocco") in preparation for the second conference of the UNFP in 1962.

Around this time, Ben Barka increasingly embraced revolutionary Marxist language, and the UNFP adopted a political program based on socialism and land reform, aiming to democratize public life and align the party with anti-imperialist Arab and African countries.

In 1962 he was accused of plotting against King Hassan II.

He was exiled from Morocco in 1963, after calling upon Moroccan soldiers to refuse to fight Algeria in the 1963 Sand War.

When he was exiled in 1963, Ben Barka became a "traveling salesman of the revolution" according to the historian Jean Lacouture.

He left initially for Algiers, where he met Che Guevara, Amílcar Cabral and Malcolm X.

Mehdi Ben Barka (المهدي بن بركة; 1920 – disappeared 29 October 1965) was a Moroccan nationalist, Arab socialist, politician, revolutionary, anti-imperialist, head of the left-wing National Union of Popular Forces (UNFP) and secretary of the Tricontinental Conference.

An opponent of French Imperialism and King Hassan II, he was "disappeared" in Paris in 1965.

On 29 October 1965, Mehdi Ben Barka was abducted ("disappeared") in Paris by French policemen and never seen again.

From there, he went to Cairo, Rome, Geneva and Havana, trying to unite the revolutionary movements of the Third World for the Tricontinental Conference meeting that was to be held in January 1966 in Havana.

In a press conference, he claimed "the two currents of the world revolution will be represented there: the current [that] emerged with the October Revolution and that of the national liberation revolution".

As the leader of the Tricontinental Conference, Ben Barka was a major figure in the Third World movement and supported revolutionary anti-colonial action in various states; this provoked the anger of the United States and France.

Just before his disappearance, he was preparing the first meeting of the Tricontinental, scheduled to take place in Havana.

The OSPAAAL (Spanish for "Organization for Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia and Latin America") was founded on that occasion.

Chairing the preparatory commission, he defined the objectives; assistance with the movements of liberation, support for Cuba during its subjection to the United States embargo, the liquidation of foreign military bases and apartheid in South Africa.

For the historian René Galissot, "The underlying reason for the removal and assassination of Ben Barka is to be found in this revolutionary impetus of Tricontinentale."

Many theories attempting to explain what happened to him were put forward over the years; in 2018 new claims regarding his disappearance were made by Israeli journalist and author Ronen Bergman in his book Rise And Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations.

Based on research and interviews with Israeli intelligence operatives who were involved in planning the kidnapping of Barka, Bergman concluded that he was located by the Mossad on behalf of Moroccan intelligence, who assisted the latter in planning the murder ultimately committed by Moroccan agents and French police, after which the Mossad disposed of his body.