Mehdi Ben Barka was most likely paid agent of communist secret police

Mehdi Ben Barka, Morocco's best known opposition leader who disappeared in 1965 in Paris, was probably a paid agent of Czechoslovakia's communist secret police in the early 1960s, the French news agency AFP reported on Wednesday, citing the weekly L'Express. According to a secret file gained by a Czech journalist whose extracts are to be published by L'Express, a Czechoslovak secret police officer established contact with Ben Barka in April 1960. Ben Barka allegedly repeatedly visited Prague where he also underwent special training in spying five months before he was abducted in Paris during a joint operation of the Moroccan and French secret services. His body has never been found.