Here's what happened to Ahmed Dlimi in 1983:
joseph hobeika
URL: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010630/1/17it3.html
Here's what happened to Ahmed Dlimi in 1983:
This is a chapter from the book:
" KILLING HOPE: U.S. MILITARY AND CIA
INTERVENTIONS SINCE WORLD WAR II "
Morocco 1983
=============
A video nasty
The government of Morocco, in January 1983, had the
sad duty to announce the "grievous death" in a car accident
of General Ahmed Dlimi, a confidant of King Hassan for
more than 20 years and commander of the Moroccan Army's
southern forces.
When the 'Le Monde' correspondent had the temerity to
suggest that Dlimi's death was perhaps not an accident, he
was summarily expelled from the country. [1]
Then, in March, Ahmed Rami, a Moroccan political scientist
living in exile in Sweden, stated unequivocally that Dlimi had
been murdered by Hassan and his security men and that the
CIA was deeply implicated. [2]
Ahmed Rami had been a lieutenant in the Moroccan Army
and a leader of 'Mouvement des Officiers Libres', the
underground movement of army officers dedicated to
overthrowing the king and the monarchy as well as the king's
personal corruption and his "crimes against human rights".
Rami was living abroad under sentence of death in Morocco
for his part in a failed attempt to shoot down a plane carrying
Hassan in 1972.
The dissident officers supported the establishment of a
"democratic Islamic Arab Republic of Morocco" and a
negotiated settlement in the country's ruinous war with the
Polisario guerrillas in the Western Sahara, a war in which US
military aid and personnel had reportedly enabled Morocco to
maintain a deadlock. [3]
Ahmed Dlimi, while serving as the king's right-hand man, had
been secretly associated with 'Officiers Libres'. When he went
abroad he would meet with Rami and during 1982 the two men
were discussing plans for a coup attempt in July of the following
year.
"Unknown to us, however," said Rami, "the CIA was investigating
him [Dlimi]. When the CIA handed over a dossier to King Hassan
in January [1983] it contained videofilm of General Dlimi and I
meeting in Stockholm last December. That was enough for Dlimi
to be eliminated." [4]
Morocco, said the 'New York Times', had become the United
States' "closest and most useful ally in the Arab world." [5]
Hassan had clearly tied his fortunes to the Reagan
administration. In 1981 alone, he was visited by Secretary of
Defense Caspar Weinberger and Secretary of State Alexander
Haig, as well as the Deputy Director of the CIA, the chairman of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a host of other
high-level Washington officials. The Assistant Secretary of
Defense for International Security arrived with a team of 23
military advisers and experts; more than 100 Americans were
reported to be working with the Moroccan armed forces. [6]
In the years previous, Hassan had co-operated extensively
with US policies in Africa. In both 1977 and 1978 he sent
Moroccan troops to Zaire in support of the American actions
there, and since the mid-1970s he had been aiding the
UNITA forces in Angola along with the United States and
South Africa in their continuing effort to overthrow the
MPLA government. At the same time, King Hassan had
allowed the CIA to build up its station in Morocco to where
it was probably one of the Agency's key posts in Africa. [7]
In these and other important ways, Hassan had earned the
gratitude and protection of the United States. Thus it was that
the CIA exposed General Dlimi's double life to the king. Dlimi,
moreover, had reportedly advocated that Morocco receive aid
from France, the former colonial power, rather than from the
United States. The CIA saw this as a threat to the American
position in the country and insisted that Hassan get rid of his
confidants who favored closer relations with France. [8]
At eleven o' clock on the night of 23 January 1983, says
Ahmed Rami, Dlimi was called to the palace in Marrakesh.
There, ten security men escorted him to an underground
interrogation room. At one a.m., "two American officers"
arrived with the king and went into the interrogation room
for several hours. Dlimi was tortured, and, at five a.m., he
was shot. His body was later placed in his car which was
exploded in a suburb of the city. No one, not even his family
was allowed to see the body. [9]
