Do we like them?Do we like Mohammed VI of Morocco?
Our score: 4 out of 10. Real generosity and some pardons sit alongside criminalised same-sex acts and mass prosecutions of young protesters, and the record is hard to read from outside.
Mohammed VI is the Alaouite king of Morocco, on the throne since 1999, and in the system there he is head of state with the last word on a lot. I couldn't get a proper early-life profile open in this session, so the backstory here is thin. What the sources do show is the king as the man who sets the national agenda each Throne Day.
In his July 2025 Throne Day speech he said legislative elections would be held on schedule and told the Interior Minister to start preparing. He also said “the Algerian people are our brothers” and offered dialogue with Algeria. Months later he called the UN Security Council's October 2025 vote on Western Sahara historic, and said Morocco's autonomy plan should be the sole basis for negotiation. Polisario said the resolution did not recognise Moroccan sovereignty, and Algeria's UN ambassador said the final decision belongs to the people under colonial domination. Where you land depends on whether you read it as a diplomatic win or as a settled question for people who never got a vote.
The recent mess is the Gen Z 212 protest movement, which hit the streets in 2025 over health, education, jobs and corruption. Clashes in Agadir killed three people, and more than 2,400 people have faced prosecution. In June 2026 a Casablanca court convicted 18 people of obstructing traffic, with most getting eight months. The king's October 2025 speech to parliament called social reform a priority, but I found no royal comment on the trials themselves.
The king has also used his pardon power. In July 2024 he pardoned journalists Omar Radi, Soulaimane Raissouni and Taoufik Bouachrine, plus historian Maati Monjib, in a batch of 2,476 pardons. Rights groups including Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders called their prosecutions politically motivated, and Amnesty and Forbidden Stories published leaked documents suggesting the journalists were targeted with spyware. Authorities vigorously denied that, and the pardon does not erase the court findings.
On the harm check for this audience: Article 489 of the penal code makes same-sex acts a crime, and it was in force through his reign. A court convicted six men under it in 2007, and a trial of two teenage girls opened in 2016. I found no words from the king on the law, for or against, so the test turns on what he has left in place rather than on anything he said. That makes it a mixed result, not a clean one either way.
The good stuff is real. After the 2023 Al Haouz earthquake he gave a billion dirhams personally through his holding company to the special relief fund. In March 2020 he ordered a COVID-19 fund that raised billions in weeks. And the 2024 mass pardon freed thousands, including the three journalists.