Abd al-Krim

Abd al-Krim ( Muhammad ibn Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi) (b. 1882, d. 5 Feb. 1963). Moroccan nationalist leader Born in Agadir, he became a newspaper editor and rose through the ranks of the Spanish administration of northern Morocco to become chief judge in 1915. He became increasingly hostile to the Spanish and French occupation of Morocco, however. He was imprisoned by the Spanish in 1917, and after his release he organized a rebellion by his tribe, the Ait Waryaghar. He inflicted a series of heavy defeats upon the Spanish, and established the Republic of the Rif in 1921. He was defeated by a joint Franco-Spanish army in 1926, imprisoned, and sent to detention on the island of La Réunion until 1947, when he was allowed to return to France. On the way he escaped to Cairo, where he set up the Maghreb Bureau or Liberation Committee of the Arab West. After Moroccan independence (1956) he refused to return, since he did not consider the new government to represent the interests of the Rif.