Hassan ascended the throne on 26 February 1961 on his father's death. His enthronement took place at the Royal Palace of Rabat on 3 March 1961, and he also inherited the position of prime minister. Hassan's reign was infamous for a poor human rights record labeled as "appalling" by the
BBC. It was, however, at its worst during the period from the 1960s to the late 1980s, which was labelled as the "
years of lead" and saw thousands of dissidents jailed, killed, exiled or
forcibly disappeared. The country would only become relatively freer by the early 1990s under strong international pressure and condemnation over its human rights record. Since then, Morocco's human rights record has improved modestly and improved significantly during the reign of Hassan's successor
Mohammed VI. In 2004, the
Equity and Reconciliation Commission was created by Mohammed to investigate human rights abuses during his father's reign. Hassan imprisoned many members of the
National Union of Popular Forces and sentenced some party leaders, including
Mehdi Ben Barka, to death. In June, he dissolved parliament and suspended the constitution of 1962, declaring a
state of exception that would last more than five years, in which he ruled Morocco directly; however, he did not completely abolish the mechanisms of
parliamentary democracy. In 1990, following riots in
Fez, Hassan set up the
Consultative Human Rights Council to look into allegations of abuse by the State. In 1991, he pardoned two thousand prisoners, including political prisoners and people held in secret prisons including in
Tazmamart. In 1998, the first opposition-led government was elected. During his reign, Morocco was labeled as "partly free" by
Freedom House, except for a "not free" ranking in 1992.
Attempted coups d'état In the early 1970s, Hassan survived two
assassination attempts.
The first occurred on 10 July 1971 during his forty-second birthday party at his palace in
Skhirat, near Rabat. The coup ended the same day when royalist troops took over the palace in combat against the rebels. Hassan himself had claimed that the coup was supported by
Libya, raising tensions between the two countries. The next day, Hassan attended the funerals of royalist soldiers killed during the attempted coup. killing eight people on board and injuring fifty. A bullet hit the fuselage but they failed to take the plane down despite it being badly damaged. Hassan hurried to the cockpit, took control of the radio, and reportedly shouted: "Stop firing, the tyrant is dead!"; After making an emergency landing at
Rabat–Salé International Airport, Hassan escaped to his palace in Shkirat in an unmarked car.
Foreign policy for
Today on NBC, 1963|left
Gamal Abdel Nasser at
Cairo Airport to attend the
Arab Summit in
Cairo, 1964|left Hassan's first official foreign visit as King was to attend the
1st Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, which took place in September 1961 in Belgrade. In the
Cold War era, Hassan allied Morocco with the West generally, and with the United States and France in particular. His obituary in
The New York Times described him as "a monarch oriented to the west". During Hassan's tenure as prime minister, Morocco controversially accepted Soviet military aid and made overtures towards Moscow. During an interview, he stated that "as an Islamic people, [Morocco has] the right to practice
bigamy. We can wed East and West and be faithful to both". The committee also gives out scholarship to students living in the city, as well as donating equipment to schools and kindergartens. Hassan also admitted , a French member of the
Holy See and one of his personal friends, to the
Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco. Calmels was responsible for bringing about a rapprochement between Islam and Christianity. Hassan was alleged to have covertly cooperated with the State of Israel and Israeli intelligence. In what was termed
Operation Yachin, he negotiated for the migration of over 97,000
Moroccan Jews to Israel from 1961 to 1964 in exchange for weapons and training for Morocco's security forces and intelligence agencies. In an arrangement financed by the American
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), Hassan was paid a sum of $500,000 along with $100 for each of the first 50,000 Moroccan Jews to be migrated to Israel, and $250 for each Jewish emigrant thereafter. Hassan served as a mediator between Arab countries and Israel. In 1977, he served as a key backchannel in peace talks between Egypt and Israel, hosting secret meetings between Israeli and Egyptian officials; these meetings led to the
Egypt–Israel peace treaty. Bergman also alleged that the Moroccan
DST and Mossad collaborated in a 1996 plot to assassinate
Osama bin Laden. The plot involved a woman close to bin Laden who was an informant for the DST; however, the mission was aborted due to rising tensions between Morocco and Israel.
Relations with Mauritania remained strained due to
Moroccan claims to the entirety of Mauritanian territory, with Morocco only recognizing Mauritania as a sovereign state in 1969, nearly a decade after the latter's declaration of independence. In 1984, as a result of the
Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) joining the
Organisation of African Unity two years prior, Hassan declared the suspension of Morocco's membership of the organisation. Morocco entered into a diplomatic crisis with Burkinabé President
Thomas Sankara following his decision to recognize the SADR. Hassan was close to Shah
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran, even hosting him in 1979 when he was exiled.
Armed conflicts On 14 October 1963, the
Sand War was declared as a result of failed negotiations over borders inherited from French colonialism between Hassan and
Algeria's newly elected president
Ahmed Ben Bella. The war heavily damaged both countries' economies, and the king ordered his citizens to call off
Eid al-Adha festivities in part due to the economic recession caused by the war. A peace treaty and armistice ended the war on 15 January 1969. During Hassan's reign, Morocco recovered the Spanish-controlled area of
Ifni in 1969, and gained control of two-thirds of what was formerly
Spanish Sahara through the
Green March in 1975. The nationalist
Polisario Front subsequently engaged in a
war for control of the territory, with support from Algeria, and relations between the two countries deteriorated further as a result.
Economy Hassan adopted a
market-based economy, where
agriculture,
tourism, and
phosphates mining industries played a major role. In 1967, he launched an irrigation project consisting of over a million hectares of land. The king eventually came to develop very good relations with parts of the French media and financial elite. In 1988, the contract for the construction of
the Great Mosque of Casablanca, a considerable project in scale, financed through compulsory contributions, was awarded to a civil engineering firm owned by
Francis Bouygues, one of the most powerful businessmen in France and a personal friend of Hassan's. His image in France was tarnished, however, following the publication in 1990 of
Gilles Perrault's
Our Friend the King, describing detention conditions in
Tazmamart, the repression of left-wing opponents and Sahrawis, political assassinations, and the poor socioeconomic conditions in which the majority of Moroccans lived. On 3 March 1973, Hassan announced a policy of "
Moroccanization", in which state-held assets, agricultural lands, and businesses that were more than fifty percent foreign-owned were taken over and transferred to local companies and businessmen. It was primarily carried out by the king and his advisor,
André Azoulay. Subsequently, the French group
Accor was able to acquire six hotels from the Moroccan chain Moussafir and the management of the
Jamaï Palace in Fez. This privatization operation enabled notables close to the Moroccan government to control the most prominent public companies, and French companies to make a strong comeback in the country's economy. The royal family also acquired the mining group Monagem. == Death and funeral ==