One day last winter Morocco's King Hassan II and his trusted lieutenant, General Mohammed Oufkir, were in the seaside resort of Agadir, discussing an official visit by Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to nearby Mauritania. To the King's astonishment, Oufkir suddenly proposed that the Moroccan air force be used to assassinate Gaddafi, who had never made any secret of his antipathy toward Hassan. "If only we could find out Gaddafi's flight plan," asked Oufkir, "what would you think of sending an F-5 to smash into him in the middle of the desert?"
"Oufkir, are you mad?" replied Hassan. "Even supposing we knew his flight plan, his altitude, his route and we hit him, you must realize that there would be an inquiry. They would find traces of bullets and rockets. In this area only Morocco has F-5s. Can you imagine the international scandal? Piracy in midair against a chief of state?" Then, to put the matter firmly out of hand, the King added: "Oufkir, I absolutely forbid this business."
THIS remarkable story of political intrigue—so similar in plan to the abortive coup that General Oufkir led against the Moroccan monarch himself two weeks ago—was recalled by King Hassan last week as he told of his narrow escape from the aerial attack on his plane. When three Moroccan air force F-5s opened fire on the King's Boeing 727 jetliner over the Mediterranean, Hassan related, it was this scene with Oufkir that flashed across his mind "immediately, just like a film."
Hassan had summoned newsmen to the Royal Guest Palace to reveal details of the attempted midair regicide. The King portrayed his Defense Minister, whom he had considered his most loyal supporter, as a chronic plotter of palace intrigue. Earlier, Hassan had claimed bitterly that he had protected Oufkir "beyond all reasonable bounds," and had even "endangered our relations with France" when he refused to extradite Oufkir for the Paris kidnaping and presumed murder in 1965 of Moroccan Leftist Mehdi Ben Barka.
King's Confidence. At the very time that Oufkir was proposing the assassination of Gaddafi he was already plotting the attack on Hassan, according to the King. The scheme, in fact, was hatched only four days after army cadets stormed the King's summer palace last July. If Oufkir had a hand in that affair, it was never revealed. But he kept the King's confidence by ordering the summary execution of ten high-ranking officers (who, had they lived, might have implicated him).