Paris - Moroccan Agent Mr Ahmed Boukhari, the former Moroccan intelligence agent, yesterday began an "unlimited" hunger strike to protest against his trial.
Mr Boukhari revealed in interviews with Le Monde and the Moroccan weekly Le Journal that Mehdi Ben Barka, the opposition leader who disappeared early in the reign of King Hassan II, was murdered by King Hassan's intelligence chief, smuggled from France to Morocco and dissolved in a tank of acid. When Mr Boukhari was arrested on August 15th, he said the case against him was "an affair being dragged out again to shut me up, when it has already been judged". His trial, for writing two bad cheques totalling £12,000 when his family business collapsed nine years ago, opened on Wednesday. Records of the previous court case against Mr Boukhari - crucial to his defence - have disappeared from the tribunal in Casablanca.