The spokesperson for the royal cabinet announced on June 29 the death of Princess Lalla Latifa, mother of King Mohammed VI, in Rabat. She has already been buried. For the moment, no national mourning has been decreed in Morocco.
“The mother of the royal children”
Aged 75, Lalla Latifa had been ill since August 2022. She had resided in Neuilly-sur-Seine since the early 2000s, where her son, Mohammed VI, returned her frequently visit. While her state of health had deteriorated in recent months, the princess, also nicknamed by the Moroccan press “the mother of the royal children”, returned to Morocco a few weeks ago.
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Lalla Latifa, born Latifa Amahzoune, in Khénifra, in 1949, comes from the Zayanes tribe and an important Amazigh family. Her grandfather is none other than the illustrious Mouha Ou Hammou Zayani, a soldier at the head of the Zayane resistance against the French colonial army at the beginning of the 20th centurye century. Lalla Latifa was also the half-sister of General Hammou Amahzoune, executed with nine other high-ranking soldiers for having orchestrated the Skhirat coup against the King Hassan II, in 1971.
To read : Morocco: Who are Mohammed VI’s cousins?
She became the second wife of King Hassan II on November 9, 1961 in a double wedding ceremony, during which the king’s brother, Moulay Abdallah, had married the Lebanese Lamia Solh. Hassan II himself had just acceded to the throne on March 3, 1961, a few days after the death of his father, King Mohammed V.
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A mosque built in his honor
Five children were born of the union between Lalla Latifa and the sovereign: Princess Lalla Meryem (1962), King Mohammed VI (1963), Princess Lalla Asma (1965), Princess Lalla Hasna (1967) and Prince Moulay Rachid (1970).
To read : Morocco: Moulay Rachid, Lalla Meryem, Lalla Asma, Lalla Hasna… Who are the king’s brothers and sisters?
Very discreet, Lalla Latifa has never played a public role. However, King Mohammed VI had the “SA Princess Lalla Latifa” mosque built in his honor in 2018 in Salé. After the death of the king Hassan II in July 1999, Lalla Latifa remarried the bodyguard of the late monarch, Mohamed Mediouri, in May 2000. The couple then settled in France, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, where the princess owned a residence.
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