Ahmed Dlimi

Ahmed Dlimi (; 16 July 1931 – 25 January 1983) was a Moroccan general under the rule of Hassan II. After General Mohamed Oufkir's 1972 assassination, he became Hassan II's right-hand man. He led the Western Sahara War and played a modest role in the Angolan Civil War. He was promoted to General during the Green March in 1975, and took charge of the Moroccan Armed Forces in the Southern Zone, where the military were fighting the Polisario Front.

Early life Dlimi comes from a family originally from Zaggota, a village in the Chrarda region that is administratively part of Sidi Kacem Province. His father, Lahcen Dlimi, was an informant for the French colonial authorities and held a subaltern position in the French intelligence agency the SDECE. It was reported that it was Lahcen Dlimi who co-opted Mohammed Oufkir for a job in the colonial administration in the late 1940s. Then remarried a daughter of another minister, Zahra Bousselham.

Through his father Ahmed Dlimi was also related to Oufkir. Fatima Chenna, the wife of Oufkir and daughter of colonel Chenna, was related to Lahcen Dlimi through her mother. According to the first judicial investigation, Ahmed Dlimi was in Paris, along with General Oufkir, at the time of Ben Barka's kidnapping. Former dissident and prisoner Ali Bourequat has also directly accused Dlimi of taking part in Ben Barka's assassination. He was acquitted by a French court in June 1967 after surrendering himself to French police. It was widely believed that French and Moroccan intelligence services cooperated with one covering the tracks of the other. or that he was killed for having become too powerful, and a threat to the monarchy. The assassination theory has been supported by dissident Ahmed Rami in March 1983, who exiled himself to Sweden after the failed coup of 1972 in which he had taken part. Rami alleged that he had clandestinely met with Dlimi in Stockholm in December 1982, and that they were preparing a coup against Hassan II, due for July 1983. Dlimi was allegedly part of the "Independent Officers" who intended to overthrow the monarchy, in order to put an end to the regime's corruption and human rights violations. They aimed to establish a "Democratic Arab Islamic Republic of Morocco" and to negotiate with the Polisario Front. Morocco was at the time a very close ally of the United States. Hassan II had sent troops to Zaire in 1977 and 1978 to support US intervention, and also assisted UNITA in Angola since the mid-1970s. He had agreed to the setting up of a CIA station in Morocco, which became one of its key installations in Africa. Hassan II had visited US Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and the State Secretary Al Haig in 1981, as well as the president of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the Deputy Director of the CIA.

Death He died in January 1983, officially in a car crash, although allegations have been made that he was assassinated. He was accused of being responsible for the death of Mehdi Ben Barka in November 1965. After Dlimi's death, fifteen other officers were arrested and three of them executed. No one was allowed to see Ahmed Dlimi's corpse.