“Mohammed VI, his hidden life in France: dinners and walks with boxers”. The headline of the French weekly L’Express This is how Mohammed VI referred to the King of Morocco, to whom he dedicated his cover last September. “In the Marais in Paris or in his castle in Oise, Mohammed VI likes to live in anonymity,” added the publication, which examined the life of the monarch and said, surely with some irony, that the sovereign “loves teleworking” because he is almost never on the front line in his country, with an agenda like that of other heads of state or prime ministers. It would be unthinkable that Felipe VI, Macron o Biden disappear for long periods of time like the sovereign of the neighboring country does. L’Express He made special reference to the friendship between the sovereign and the Spanish fighter. Yusef Kaddur, with whom His Majesty is spending the summer these days, according to what has emerged thanks to social networks.
Less than two weeks have passed since we learned of the death of Mohamed VI’s mother, Lalla Latifa, as reported by the Moroccan Royal Palace. The princess, widow of King Hassan II and mother of the current monarch, died at the Dar Essalam palace in Rabat at the age of 78 due to pancreatic cancer for which she was being treated in Paris. Her health had been so delicate lately that in April her son travelled to France as soon as Ramadan ended and also presided over several religious ceremonies in Morocco.
In Morocco, it is impossible to publish details of the monarch’s activities because freedom of the press is limited and repressive laws are very severe. But outside the borders of the Alawite kingdom, censorship does not work in the same way and the sovereign’s behaviour is outrageous. For example, the French press reported in September that Mohammed VI was in Paris when the earthquake that hit Morocco devastated the area with three thousand dead and at least 5,530 injured, according to a report released by the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior.
French newspapers reported that the son of Hassan II, crowned in 1999, works from home. They spoke of his life in various sumptuous residences, such as the Gabonese one in Pointe-Denis, where a coup d’état overthrew his friend Ali Bongo. A retired adviser to the royal court, who has worked with the monarch since his childhood, was cited as a source. The weekly recalls that, for example, in 2017, Mohammed VI spent 45% of the year away from his borders, in 2018, almost half. After his divorce, he was heart surgery at the Ambroise-Paré hospital in Neuilly. The king owns the fifth largest fortune in Africa, ten times richer than the king of England.
This July, as we noted, King Mohammed VI is spending his holidays in Rincón, on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco, while his two children, Moulay Hassan and Lalla Khadija, and his ex-wife, Lalla Salma, are in Mykonos. A spontaneous person has photographed him in a convertible Mercedes that does not have a license plate. With him is again Yusef Kaddur, the Spaniard from Melilla, an expert in mixed martial arts who was deputy youth minister at the request of the Coalition for Melilla, a party with a predominantly Muslim membership. In the weekend images, Kaddur appears in the car sitting just behind Mohammed VI. The friend of the Monarch was seen in December 2022, also sitting behind Mohammed VI in an SUV, wearing a red shirt of the Atlas Lions, the Moroccan national team. Both were celebrating in the streets of Rabat the victory of the Moroccan national team against Spain in the World Cup in Qatar.
Yusef Kaddur came to Mohamed through other elite fighters: the German-Moroccan Azaitar brothers. Journalist Ignacio Cembrero says in El Confidencial that Kaddur is more of a friend of the sovereign than a bodyguard and cites Spanish police officers who have acted as bodyguards and who have seen videos of the fighter to support his claim.
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