ACID WAS USED IN IRAN TO DISSOLVE CORPSES, A CIA AGENT CLAIMS
PARIS 3 July (IPS) "Acid was in use in Iran in the fifties" (to get rid of the corpses of victims), according to a former official of the Moroccan secret services, quoting a CIA agent identified as "Colonel Martin".
The sordid story was part of a two-volumes investigation carried
by the influential French daily "Le Monde" and the Moroccan
independent weekly "Le Journal" on the fate of Mr. Mehdi Ben
Barka, the charismatic Moroccan dissident who was abducted in Paris on 29
October 1965 and "disappeared" ever since.
According to the papers quoting Mr. Ahmed Boukhari, a former Moroccan secret services agent, in order to eradicate any trace of Mr. Ben Barka, once "repatriated" to Rabat on a Moroccan military plane from Paris, the dead corpse of the victim, "dressed exactly the way he was on the day of his kidnapping", was placed in a specially made acid tank, "constructed according to plan provided by Colonel Martin".
A sketch of the tank that served to dissolve the corpse of Mr. Ben Barka (and probably other dissidents), "as drawn by Colonel Martin for Mr. Boukhari to execute" is reproduced by "Le Monde" in its first and second July issue.
"The latter had explained him that such a diving suit of death had been in use, in the fifties, in Iran where he had been posted before", "Le Monde" said in the sensational article.
However, it is not clear whether that the method of using acid liquid to eradicate all traces of dissidents was introduced in Iran by the American Central Intelligence Agency after the creation of SAVAK, the former regime’s secret services it helped to set up following the 1953 coup mounted in co-operation with the Intelligence Service to topple Dr. Mohammad Mosadeq, the nationalist Prime Minister who had nationalised the nation’s oil industries that were in the monopoly of the British government.
Questioned by Iran Press Service, Mr. Stephen Smith, one of the three authors of the article acknowledged the confusion and promised to ask Mr. Boukhari for more details, "in case he was told more about (the use of acid in Iran) by Colonel Martin, "certainly a nickname", Mr. Smith said.
"But this would take some times since Mr. Boukhari went in hiding following the publication of his interview", Mr. Smith explained.
Though there were rumours in Iran about such ways to get rid of dissidents, especially after the massive crackdown of the "Tudeh" (Iranian staunchly pro-Soviet Communist) Party that followed the CIA-Intelligence Service’s anti-Mosadeq coup that installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi back to his throne, yet no evidence were found to substantiate the claims, mostly propagated by the Communists and opponents of the former Monarch, deposed in the 1979 Islamic revolution.
All the Iranians questioned by IPS, including some former Tudeh members who were jailed under the Monarchy regime and claimed to have been tortured denied the existence of such acid tanks in prisons, while other blamed both "Le Mone" and the CIA of having "invented" the story in order to harm renewed activities undertaken by Prince Reza Pahlavi against the Islamic Republic.
Mr. Ben Barka, a teacher and a friend of King Hasan II of Morocco before becoming his number one enemy, was one of the youngest leaders of the Istiqlal Party. He was kidnapped on broad daylight by several gangsters assisted by French agents in front of "Brasserie Lipp", a famous restaurant in Saint Germain Boulevard, where top brass intellectuals and politicians would eat, and was reported dead in never formally elucidated circumstances.
Though many books and as many stories were written and told about what became known as "The Ben Barka Affair", but this is the first time that a source, "on duty" during the operation, recording the events from the start to the end, is giving a "fist hand" evidence about the assassination of a man also wanted by the CIA for the active role he was playing among the third world movement, including the orchestration of a "Tri-Continent Conference" held in Havana, Cuba.
According to Mr. Boukhari, after being abducted, Mr. Ben Barka was taken to a residence in a Paris suburb where he died following an overdose of sedative drogue injected after being tortured by Lieutenant Ahmed Dlimi (a Deputy to General Mohamed Oufkir, the then powerful Interior Minister, head of the "Cab 1", for Cabinet One, former Moroccan Special Services, and the right hand man of King Hasan II. He was "shot dead" in the Royal Palace following a failed attempt to kill the King on his back home from Paris by shooting on his plane by jet fighters).
Speaking French and Arabic fluently, the so-called "Colonel Martin" was in Morocco with two other CIA colleagues identified as "Scott" and "Steve" to "assist" Moroccan special services "counter-subversion" department and as such, was "the fist foreigner to learn that the corpse of Mr. Ben Barka was to be transported to Morocco, the investigators, Mr. Smith of "Le Monde" and Mr. Aboubakar Jamai and Mr. Ali amar for "Le Journal" wrote. ENDS BEN BARKA 3701