Morocco's King Hassan II is today the only monarch in North Africa swept by the winds of socialism. Just over a year ago, he narrowly escaped when dissident army cadets invaded his birthday party with machine guns, rockets and mortars and killed 92 guests. Last week Hassan had another miraculous escape —this time from his own air force.
The King was flying home from a three-week visit to France and his Boeing 727 jetliner was just descending to begin the approach into Rabat airport when three American-made F-5 Freedom Fighters of the Moroccan air force flew out to meet it. Suddenly, the aerial escort opened fire with rockets and machine guns on the royal plane. After two passes they had damaged the cockpit, cut hydraulic lines, smashed instruments and blown out a rear door. As Prince Moulay Abdullah, the King's brother related later, the quick-thinking Hassan called the attacking pilots on the airliner's radio and told them that he was the flight engineer. The King was "mortally wounded," he said, and the airliner's two pilots were dead; he would attempt a landing at Rabat.
The air force pilots obligingly escorted the plane down to the airfield, where it landed safely with two of its three engines out of action. Calmly, the King reviewed the honor guard, chatted with Cabinet ministers and waiting foreign diplomats. Also waiting was Hassan's Defense Minister, General Mohammed Oufkir, 52. Ruthless, his eyes always hidden by dark glasses, Oufkir for more than a decade had been considered the strongest prop of the Moroccan monarchy. He gained international notoriety in 1965 for his role in the Paris kidnaping and presumed murder of the Moroccan Leftist Mehdi Ben Barka; a French court convicted Oufkir in absentia of the crime.
This day, shortly before the crippled plane landed, Oufkir had been summoned to the telephone at the airport control tower. What was said over the phone was not revealed. But shortly after the King, with three of his four children, had sped away to his summer palace in a small black Renault-16, a Moroccan air force jet made four passes at the field, shooting up cars, scattering the honor guard, killing eight people and wounding 47. But once again, Hassan had escaped totally unscathed.
Elsewhere, loyal officers were moving fast to take the situation in hand. Kenitra Air Base (where some 700 American Air Force advisers and their families are stationed) was surrounded. The Moroccan base commander, Major Kouera el Ouafi, 35, parachuted from his F-5 and was arrested. Five other airmen fled in a helicopter to Gibraltar. The British turned them over to Moroccan authorities two days later. At the same time, hundreds of airmen at Kenitra were placed under arrest.
The morning after the abortive coup, when calm had apparently returned to the capital, Morocco was shaken with the official announcement that eight hours after the attack on the royal plane, Oufkir had shot himself in the head at the King's palace at Skhi-rat. When word first broke, speculation was that he might have done so out of a sense of disgrace at having failed to prevent the revolt. Not so, charged Interior Minister Mohammed Benhima, revealing that one of the Gibraltar fugitives had implicated Oufkir. "It was a suicide of treachery," he said, "not a suicide of loyalty."