Tuesday, Sep 07, 2004

The recent mafia-style killing of a former member of the Moroccan royal household in southern Spain has brought to light a secretive palace culture of the past, even as King Mohammed and his advisers attempt to project a modern image.

The body of Hicham Mandari, 34, was found in a car park near Malaga on the Costa del Sol on August 4, with a bullet in the head. The police, confirming the death 10 days later, said it looked like a professional hit.

"Mandari was someone trying to wear trousers too big for him," says Mohammed Selhami, editor of Maroc Hebdo, a weekly newspaper. "There have been many Mandaris. In the palace in the old days, you had women getting involved, and the secret services. Things could get complicated."

From a middle-class family in the capital Rabat, Mandari had a flair for media attention and dubious company since he left the north African kingdom in early 1999. He was under investigation in France for a currency scam. Much of the Moroccan press sees Russian and other mafias as chief murder suspects. "A pitiful end for a crook," declared

Aujourd'hui le Maroc newspaper.

But Mandari's colourful past before quitting Morocco is under fresh scrutiny.

He joined the royal security detail in the early 1990s, as King Hassan was moving away from the repression of previous decades. Behind the ochre walls of the palace enclosure in Rabat, an older lifestyle persisted. With King Hassan's official wife "mother of the princes", the king's concubines lived in seclusion, attended by white-robed servants descended from slaves. As in the best palace dramas, intrigue abounded.

Mandari would claim later that he was a love-child of King Hassan by his favourite concubine, Farida Cherkaoui. But a Rabat housewife, Schehrazade Fichtali, in 2003 dismissed as nonsense her son's story. Photos of her businessman husband, Mohammed Mandari, seemed to establish a family resemblance.

Mandari left the country before King Hassan died in July 1999. In June 1999 the exile claimed, in a full-page advertisement in The Washington Post, to hold information potentially damaging to the Moroccan monarchy.

Hailed as a 35-year-old reformer who would rapidly move towards democracy, King Mohammed seemed intent on letting fresh air into a moribund palace culture. Cautiously installing his own entourage, and pensioning off his father's concubines, he signalled that his own marriage in 2002 to Selma Bennani, an IT specialist, would be thoroughly modern.

Stories surfaced that Mandari had tapped into royal bank accounts abroad, using blank cheques bearing the late king's signature to embezzle large amounts of money as the ailing monarch's grip loosened. Ms Cherkaoui was also charged with forgery. Her current whereabouts are unknown. There was no action to prosecute Mandari, however. With Islamist radicals garnering support among hard-pressed Moroccans, it was no time to encourage public debate about royal wealth.

Figures as high as several hundred million dollars have been cited in the Moroccan press, without official denial. Mandari's claims to royal blood and to have compromising information were taken up by the Algerian and Spanish press, as he created a pseudo-opposition group, the National Council of Free Moroccans.

In 2002 he was extradited from the US to France, under investigation for having allegedly helped put into circulation unauthorised Bahraini dinars. A second French investigation was prompted by Moroccan banker Othman Benjelloun, chairman of Banque Marocaine pour le Commerce Exterieur (BMCE), and regarded as close to the palace. He told French investigators that in 2003 Mandari attempted to blackmail him. Both investigations were continuing in August.

Mandari believed his life was in danger, says Ali Amar, director general of Le Journal magazine. Mandari's French lawyer, William Bourdon, reports two previous attempts to kill him, in 2002 and 2003.

News of the killing abroad inevitably evoked memories of the unexplained disappearance from a busy Paris street of Mehdi Ben Barka, Moroccan leftist leader, in 1965. "Even if the Moroccan secret services had no hand (in Mandari's killing), it is they who will be regarded as responsible," the Casablanca-based L'Economiste newspaper said.

The Moroccan palace sets firm limits to media curiosity. "That is my secret garden," King Mohammed replied to an interviewer's attempt to probe his married life. It was an unfortunate echo of the phrase used some two decades ago by his late father, when questioned about human rights abuses.

For Le Journal, the Mandari affair is not yet over. Mandari recently told the magazine he would present revelations about the royal household at a news conference in Marbella in early August, says Amar. Less adventurous Moroccan newspapers will consign the story to history's dustbin. Whoever was behind the killing, says Mr Selhami, "Mandari's death is going to reassure everyone. He attempted many times to harm Morocco."

By EILEEN BYRNE