SLOWLY, the Moroccan television cameras panned across a parade ground of the Moulay Ismail military barracks near Rabat. The scene was chilling: ten tall stakes driven into the ground at intervals, firing squads at the ready, and detachments of the Moroccan armed forces on hand as witnesses. Ten ranking officers—four generals, five colonels and a commandant—marched into view. Each was tied to a stake, each had his epaulets and insignia ripped from his uniform. Just before the firing squads triggered their lethal volleys, home screens were deliberately blacked out. There were only sounds: the condemned men shouting "Yaish el Hassan el Thani!" (Long live King Hassan the Second) and chanting the Moslem act of faith, which begins "La lllaha ilia Allah" (There is no God but God) just before they died. Then the crack of rifle fire, the angry shouts of onlookers. Before the picture returned, the witnesses spat on the crumpled bodies of the rebels—the ultimate Arab insult.
In such electronic fashion did the current heir of Morocco's three-century-old Alouite dynasty bring home a chilling lesson to his subjects: any who rebel against him will be shot, perhaps without trial. Only two days before their deaths last week, the condemned officers had led 1,400 army cadets in an abortive coup while Hassan and 500 guests celebrated the King's 42nd birthday at a seaside party (see box). The coup was put down in a matter of hours, and life quickly returned to normal in Morocco under the strong hand of General Mohammed Oufkir, 51, a tough, uncompromising Berber who is Hassan's Interior Minister and most loyal general. By week's end, Oufkir's men had reportedly arrested some 900 cadets.
Bewildered Cadets. The planning of the coup was, at best, amateurish. The plotters used green, bewildered army cadets. They neglected to block roads, close airports or persuade other units in Algeria's 45,000-man army to join them. Said Hassan in his post-coup press conference: "They took over the Ministry of Interior, but they forgot about police headquarters. They occupied the radio station, but forgot about the telegraph and post office. They used the radio transmitter that covers Rabat, but forgot the one in Tangiers." What is more, both Colonel Mohammed Ababou, director of the Abermoumou military academy and a mastermind of the plot, and General Mohammed Medbouh, the ostensible leader, were killed during the Shootout at Skhirat, apparently by their own men.
When the coup attempt began and the rebels broadcast slogans like "Socialism has arrived—down with monarchy!" it appeared to be a standard, radical-inspired Arab upheaval. Certainly it had Libya's mercurial Colonel Muammar Gaddafi fooled. There is no evidence to indicate that Libya had any advance knowledge of the plot. Nonetheless, Gaddafi earned Hassan's enmity by immediately offering ground, armor and air support to what he thought were his ideological brothers in Morocco. They were hardly that. Medbouh, 44, was a wealthy satrap, not a struggling junior officer as Gaddafi had been before Libya's 1969 coup. General Mustapha Amehrach, 48, overall head of the military academies, kept a villa in Rabat, a beach house by the sea, an apartment in Paris and two farms.