For more than a quarter of a century, Driss Basri was one of the most influential and feared security chiefs in the Arab world. From the early 1970s until the death of King Hassan II in July 1999, Basri was the second-most-powerful man in the Kingdom of Morocco. Throughout this time, prime ministers and governments came and went, but the total trust that Hassan placed in Basri made him politically “untouchable.”

His authority was enormous: not only did he preside over the entire internal security establishment, but he also ran the administration of the country, and most importantly any electoral processes, through his control over local governors. As King Hassan’s “enforcer” in the Western Sahara, he had vital responsibility for the issue that above all others defined Moroccans’ sense of national pride. Through his network of friends and allies which controlled much of the country’s business and economy, he amassed considerable wealth. His abrupt dismissal, in November 1999, by the new King, Mohammed VI, amounted to a political earthquake in the North African country and was regarded by regional analysts as of almost equal significance as the passing of the old king himself.

Driss Basri was born in 1938, in the city of Settat, south of Casablanca. He grew up amid the ferment of the postwar years and the mood of growing nationalist self-confidence that would bring independence from France in 1956. There was no evidence that Basri played a particular role in the agitation, embarking on a law degree after completing his secondary education. But he had determined from an early age that he wanted to dedicate his life to what he called “civil service”, first and foremost to King Hassan, who had succeeded the throne on the death of his father, Mohammed V, in 1961.

Basri first came to public prominence as a police chief in the capital, Rabat; before long, he was a key player at the Interior Ministry with a special brief for internal security. It was a worrying time for King Hassan: twice in the early 1970s he survived audacious plots on his life – an attack on a royal palace and an attempt to shoot down the royal plane. In January 1973 the King put Basri, still only 34, in charge of counter-intelligence at the Interior Ministry – in other words, the secret police. It was a measure of the trust the king had in him. Within a year, Basri was promoted to Secretary of State at the Interior Ministry, becoming full minister five years later.

He set about making himself indispensable. Basri built up a security apparatus whose tentacles reached into every aspect of national life. He made sure that no decision of government was taken without his seal of approval. The Interior Ministry, under Basri, supervised all state and public committees dealing with business and investment in Morocco’s 16 provinces. To Moroccans, Basri embodied the “Makhzen” – the rule by which the security forces determined everything from elections to eligibility for free medical prescriptions. Not content with merely pulling all the strings, Basri took on the additional portfolio of Information Minister in the mid1980s, becoming the public voice of the regime in its dealings with an increasingly critical foreign media.

Foreign criticism was focused on two areas: Morocco’s dismal human rights record and its refusal to acknowledge the aspirations to greater autonomy of the people of the Western Sahara – the former Spanish colony annexed by Rabat in the 1970s. Basri was inevitably the target in both instances. The routine imprisonment and torture (and sometimes death) of anyone who showed signs of dissent earned him the sobriquet “Butcher Basri” from human rights activists. His totally unaccommodating policy in the Western Sahara, where vast sums were spent every day to ensure a military and civilian occupation of the territory, won him the undying hatred of the Polisario Front independence fighters. Even after Rabat had grudgingly accepted United Nations proposals for a referendum to decide the future of the territory, Basri was telling journalists that any Moroccan who believed the vote could be lost was a traitor. In all this, however, Basri was the faithful executor of King Hassan’s own policies. He never appeared to provoke the suspicion of a sometimes paranoid monarch, because he never sought power in his own right. In his role as chief lieutenant he had much of the authority of monarchy without its dangerous exposure.

Hassan and Basri were inseparable and, inevitably, the King’s death raised big questions about the latter’s future. The new King, Mohammed VI, had long been rumoured to be no admirer of Basri and realised that offering a new start for Moroccans, as he had promised to do, would mean breaking with his father’s right-hand man. Mohammed’s resolve was almost immediately strengthened by Basri’s ham-fisted repression in the Western Sahara, an ill-judged response to protests fuelled more by lack of jobs than nationalism. Basri’s deep unpopularity among the poor was brought sharply home to the King when they went on a tour of the poverty-stricken north of the country: the King was cheered, Basri was booed repeatedly.

On the day after his 61st birthday and after 25 years at the heart of power, Basri was summoned to the palace and relieved of his duties. He laughed off his demise saying that at least he would now have time to play his beloved golf. But, for most Moroccans, Basri’s removal was the most welcome act of Mohammed VI’s first year in power. Basri’s supporters would argue that his great achievements had been to ensure Hassan II’s protection and that the Kingdom would not be engulfed by the Islamic fundamentalism which brought so much murder and mayhem to neighbouring Algeria. But Basri’s detractors would say he fed Hassan’s paranoia and in his greed for power, prevented Morocco from moving towards the more open, constitutional-style monarchy more likely to produce lasting stability.

After his removal Basri left Morocco for Paris and lived in a luxurious apartment. Official sources in Rabat believed he had cancer. He is survived by his wife, three sons and a daughter.

Driss Basri, Interior Minister of the Kingdom of Morocco, 1977-1999, was born on November 8, 1938. He died on August 27, 2007, aged 68