March 31, 2023 – 11:00 PM – World
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Jalloul “Chico” Bouchikhi, a French-Moroccan guitarist and the co-founder of the Gipsy Kings, talks about an episode in his life that left a profound impression on him: the mistaken assassination of his older brother by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad , in 1973.
It all started with a Mossad investigation in Norway, to find the originators of the 1972 Olympic Games attacks in Munich, Germany. A total of 11 Israeli athletes were murdered. The attack is known as Black September. The Israeli secret services came across a lead, Ali Hassan Salameh, who they believed was the mastermind behind the attack. Without further deepening the investigation, in 1973 they killed Ahmed, Chico’s brother, in front of his Norwegian wife.
“He was killed at the age of 30, in front of her, on her way home from the cinema. She was pregnant,” the former Gipsy Kings guitarist tells The Parisian. He heard the sad news in Saint-Tropez, where he played with the Reyes brothers. “We never talked about it in our family,” he says. The King of Morocco has had Ahmed’s body repatriated. We never received an apology from Israel.” The death of his older brother marked him for life. Ahmed gave him “his first guitar, introduced him to jazz, classical music and flamenco”.
Years later, on the first anniversary of the Oslo Accords in 1994, Chico was finally able to forgive. His former band Gipsy Kings and his brother Bobby, a photographer, had left Paris for Oslo to perform. On this occasion, Bobby captured with a photo the moment when Chico shook hands with Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian president, and Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister. “Except my brother and I, nobody knew our story. I had chills. It was an unforgettable moment. This picture is the image of forgiveness.”
