Mehdi Ben Barka

Mehdi Ben Barka (Arabic: المهدي بن بركة‎‎; 1920 – disappeared 29 October 1965) was a Moroccan politician, head of the left-wing National Union of Popular Forces (UNPF) and secretary of the Tricontinental Conference. An opponent of King Hassan II, he "disappeared" in Paris in 1965. Despite countless theories attempting to explain what happened to him, details of his disappearance have never been established; investigations were still ongoing as of 2009.

Ben Barka was born in Rabat, Morocco to a civil servant, and in 1950 became the first Moroccan Muslim to get a degree in mathematics in an official French school. He became a prominent member of the Moroccan opposition in the nationalist Istiqlal Party, but left in 1959 after clashes with conservative opponents to found the left-wing National Union of Popular Forces (UNFP).

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 "travelling 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. 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".

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