The Return

One of the most intriguing episodes following the Algerian cease-fire was the homecoming of Mohammed Ben Bella.

Considered the ablest and most popular of the F.L.N. rebels, Ben Bella was kidnaped in 1956 when, together with four other Algerian leaders, he boarded a Moroccan plane to fly to Tunis. The French pilot unexpectedly landed at Algiers airport and handed his passengers over to the French, who kept them prisoners for the next five years. In accordance with the ceasefire, De Gaulle's government last week released Ben Bella and his friends from confinement in the Chateau D'Au-noy, near Paris. The French wanted to return Ben Bella and his companions to Morocco, but both the French government and the F.L.N. feared that Salan's Secret Army Organization might attempt to re capture him. F.L.N. intelligence reported that the S.A.O. had at least seven Mystere jet fighters ready to intercept any flight across the Mediterranean.

So Ben Bella was put aboard an Air France Caravelle to Switzerland, where he was delivered into the hands of Morocco's African Affairs Minister, Dr. Abdelkrim Khatib. Then the U.S. entered the picture. Responding to a request by Morocco's King Hassan II, the State Department, "with President Kennedy's knowledge," passed the problem on to the Military Air Transport Service, which produced a Pan Am Boeing 707 jet available for charter.

Taking off from Geneva at midnight (and so rapidly that the F.L.N. leaders left their baggage behind), the Boeing flew at maximum altitude along a route (Milan, Barcelona, Madrid) that avoided all French territory and, four hours later, put down at the U.S. Air Force Base at Nouasseur, Morocco, where F.L.N. Pre mier Benyoussef Benkhedda and a clutch of Moroccan officials sipped Coca-Cola --courtesy of the base commander -- while they waited.

For Morocco, Ben Bella's return meant the end of a humiliating international loss of face as well as "the end of the night mare of an atrocious war." For the F.L.N.

leadership, it meant the reunion of revolutionary brothers long separated, but also heightening of political tension. F.L.N.

Information Minister M'hammed Yazid hastened to inform newsmen that "we are all very fond of one another and on the best of terms." But Premier Benkhedda, watching a hundred thousand Moroccans lining the seven-mile route to Rabat and screaming "Yaeesh Ben Bella!" (Long live Ben Bella), could well be wondering if the return of an old comrade might not mean the rise of a political rival.

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