Hassan's Secret Garden

...Sentences depend—as the King himself once admitted to a French journalist—on the royal whim...

...Lesser mortals, such as politicians, may have to wait half a day even if they are from the West, a couple of days if they are not, longer still if both Moroccan and in disgrace...

...So had some of the paintings due to be displayed in Paris' Grand Palais, host to the likes of Raphael and Turner...

...During the past decade, Danielle Mitterrand, the President's wife, and Georges Kiejman, a leading lawyer recently appointed Justice Secretary, have repeatedly incurred royal displeasure by taking up the cases of Moroccan political prisoners...

...Political prisoners are rounded up for mass trials that are a masquerade, except when the accused denounce the torture sessions they have been subjected to...

...Perrault is an investigative journalist with a left-wing bent who is more inclined to peel away the façade of a proWestern regime like Morocco's than that of, say, North Korea...

...Underlying the severe indictment, though, is the regret that the King fails to live up to his public image...

...The King's official reason for calling off the whole thing was that rejoicing would be unseemly while Moroccan troops are part of the international force in Saudi Arabia...

...Nevertheless, he argues, shaking hands with Peres "cannot clean the royal palm of its sins," and security concerns are no excuse for human rights violations by a ruler French diplomats call "Our friend the King"—the source of Perrault's ironic title...

...Having tamed his own media, he is unused to criticism...

...The book, published this autumn and a prompt bestseller, sheds light on the dark underworld of his regime...

...Invited last December to a French television talkshow, he told viewers who questioned him about international reports condemning his country's violation of human rights: "If I knew that merely 1 per cent of what is written in those reports —which I have not read—is true, you may be assured that I could not sleep and that I would do my utmost to bring an end to it...

...At the beginning of October the King canceled Le Temps du Maroc, an expensive, largescale cultural project that officials from both countries had been working on for several months...

...The book owes its unexpected popularity at least as much to the recent doings of the Iraqi and Syrian leaders in Kuwait and Lebanon, respectively, as to Hassan's cancellation of Le Temps du Maroc...

...What outrages Perrault most, perhaps, is Hassan's cynicism...

...In February of this year, the King made a point of receiving an Amnesty International delegation...

...Asked about Morocco's political prisoners, he replied: "Every head of state has his secret garden...

...In fact, he had been angered by French attempts to persuade him to mark the occasion with a humanitarian gesture, and by the recent publication here of a sharply critical book...

...The wife and children of General Mohammed Oufkir also have been held captive ever since he died after a foiled coup in 1972 (the youngest son was three at the time...

...Judges are instructed to let them speak...

...A senior official at the French Culture Ministry told me it is what finally caused the King to cancel Le Temps du Maroc...

...They ranged from medieval Moorish-Spanish music to rai, North African pop...

...A PLACE FOR OPPONENTS King Hassan's Secret Garden By Janice Valls-Russell Paris He calls King Juan Carlos of Spain "brother" but has been known to arrive late at official receptions during state visits to Spain...

...A play recounting the life of a 14thcentury North African traveler had been specially commissioned for the event...

...For King Hassan, who celebrates 30 years on the throne next February, it was a self-promoting extravaganza...

...from Berber crafts to Marrakech couture...

...The opening chapter of Notre A mi le Roi is spoiled by a blend of Third World jargon and outdated Marxism...

...Yet many cannot help wondering whether his systematic repression of the mildest formsofoppositionhasn't contributed to fueling a religious fanaticism in his country that could one day endanger his throne and the stability of the Western Mediterranean...

...Contingency assumptions that the Syrian President is a useful if unappetizing ally against Saddam Hussein are considered rocky: Memories are still fresh with the backing Iraq received against Iran from Arab and Western nations alike...

...In the rest of the book, however, he has blended careful research and a pacy narrative to produce a grim yet enthralling guide to a sunless Morocco that is carefully hidden from Western tourists...

...According to Amnesty International, some have never been put on trial and others have been kept imprisoned after serving their sentences...

...An exhibition of Moroccan Jewish art was scheduled, too...

...He pays a grudging tribute as well to his good relations with Western Europe and the United States, and recalls his meeting with Israeli Labor Party leader Shimon Peres...

...One comes away from the book dismayed by the thought that, for all of Hassan's harshness, his regime is neither the exception nor the worst in Africa and the Arab world...

...Perrault acknowledges Hassan's "exceptional intelligence and culture," and the courage he revealed in two close assassination attempts...

...Measured by this royal barometer, President François Mitterrand's rating with the King has been low this year...

...Irritated by the French President's references to human rights, which were coldly received by most African leaders present, he remarked: "I should have arrived an hour later...

...As one radio commentator observed, criticizing Perrault's "selective indignation": "The sad thing is that what happens in Hassan's prisons is nothing compared to what happens in those of Hussein and Assad...

...A selection of works by five men and a woman had been chosen, all of them idiosyncratic attempts to find in abstract art ways round the Muslim ban on pictorial representation...

...By making a public issue of Perrault's work, including trying to have it banned, he merely strengthened its case against him...

...Long Hassan's right-hand man and successively Interior and Defense Minister, Oufkirwasnosaint, but the King's vindictiveness has upset many French Socialists...

...Altogether, Le Temps du Maroc was the kind of razzle-dazzle Lang excels at...

...This pessimism may reflect the author's mistrust of regimes installed by former colonial powers and his disgust with French journalists, intellectuals and politicians who let themselves be impressed by Hassan's affable charm, elegant French and lavish hospitality...

...Perrault shows how 30 years of catand-mouse play have reduced the opposition to subservient fearfulness: A party leader "disappears" and his successor is invited to oneof the King's several luxurious palaces to discuss a constitutional reform that will never be made...

...Over 300 artists, dancers, musicians, and actors were involved...

...In June, during a conference of Frenchspeaking African countries, Hassan arrived 40 minutes after Mitterrand had begun his inaugural address...

...They include Abraham Serfaty, a Leftwing Moroccan Jew whose 17 years in prison make him Africa's longest-detained political prisoner now that Nelson Mandela is free, and military officers locked away in tiny dark cells from which death has offered the only release thus far...

...One excuse voiced for Hassan in Western foreign ministries is that he is a bulwark against Muslim fundamentalism...

...The idea is to intimidate other would-be opponents while reassuring Western observers that the Moroccan judiciary is, to some extent, independent...

...Perrault's tour through Morocco's prisons and torture chambers provides disturbing evidence for his charge that the repression constitutes "a system of government" and, "like the King, can no longer change...

...Pressure from Kiejman, who on one visit to Morocco was kept waiting two days by the King, finally resulted in a royal promise to Mitterrand in October 1987 that the family would be allowed to emigrate to Canada before the end of the month...

...Phone-in radio and television programs reveal that, suddenly, the French public rightly wishes to know more about the Muslim rulers its successive governments have cultivated and questions the extent to which their diplomats should hobnob with regimes short on human rights...

...Western rulers are, however, relatively lucky: King Hassan II of Morocco may keep them waiting only an hour or two...

...Human rights are also the issue behind a second royal snub that has irritated Mitterrand and embarrassed his Culture Minister, Jack Lang...

...I would have been spared a lesson...

...More than 50 events had been scheduled throughout the country, with some overflowing into Italy, Switzerland and Holland...

...Janice Valls-Russell writes about French and Spanish affairs for the NL...

...The promise was never honored...

...The visible tip of the regime's repressive system, says Perrault, is the lawcourt...

...The year-long festival of Moroccan art past and present was due to kick off in France on October 22 with a lavish display of folk dancing in central Paris...

...Already annoyed because French Socialist personalities keep nagging at him in private, King Hassan has been enraged by Gilles Perrault's Notre Ami le Roi (Gallimard...