Ahmed Rami of Radio Islam on the assassination of General Dlimi in Morocco and the CIA connection

Ahmed Rami of Radio Islam on the assassination of General Dlimi in Morocco and the connection to the CIA

Here below we reproduce in full the text from Chapter 46 (pages 278-279) from William Blum's epic book on covert CIA operations and United States military interventions during the second half of the 20th century: Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions since World War II (PDF)

In the text below Ahmed Rami, founder of Radio Islam, reveals information on the assassination of Moroccan General Ahmed Dlimi, by the corrupt Moroccan King Hassan II - with the collusion of the CIA.

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 Le Mouvement des Officers Livres, the underground movement of army officers dedicated to overthtowing 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 Livres. 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 video film 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 gov-ernment. 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

Footnotes to Chapter 46:

1. The Nation (New York), 26 March 1983, p. 356.

2. Interview in Africa Now (London), March 1983, pp. 14-18.

3. Claudia Wright, "Showdown in the Sahara", Inquiry magazine (Washington), 12 April 1982, p. 24; New York Times, 1 February 1983, p. 3.

4. Africa Now, op. eft., p. 14.

5. New York Times, 1 February 1983, p. 3.

6. Wright, p. 24.

7. Ibid, pp. 24-5.

8. Africa Now, op. cit.,pp. 14-15.

9. Ibid., p. 14.

Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions since World War II (PDF)

Back to our section on Ahmed Rami and Radio Islam

Back to our section on Morocco and Jewish-Israeli influence

Back to our section on CIA and U.S. foreign policies, interventions, atrocities