Hammouchi, Counter Terrorist Cells .. The ‘Supercop’ Who Never Sleeps
Starting from a small village in the pre-Rif region, Abdellatif Hammouchi has carved out a world reputation for himself in intelligence.
Abdellatif Hammouchi was born in the heart of rural Morocco, in the village of Beni Fteh, in the pre-Rif, near the town of Taza.
He graduated from the University of Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdallah in Fes and joined the police as an officer in 1993.
Soon after Hamidou Laanigri left the DST a day after the Casablanca bombings of 16 May 2003 and was appointed as the Director of the General Directorate for National Security, he was replaced by his deputy Ahmed Harrari, who was replaced by Hammouchi in December 2005.
The shining star of Hammouchi was never a luck and did not come by chance, many officials who accompanied him in his professional career emphasized. The man was a person who worked hard.
Hammouchi’s knowledge of the Islamic movements and his excellence in dealing with terrorist cell files enabled him to obtain the most sensitive security positions in 2007 as the youngest director general of the internal intelligence service at the age of 39.
His success in different difficult tasks enabled him to win the confidence of the country’s monarch and combine two sensitive security positions at the same time, after his appointment in 2015 as Director General of National Security.
Hammouchi has always been the leader in the field as in the case of “Argana” bombings in which he led the intelligence work himself and put the intelligence data in the hands of the national division of the judicial police to complete the procedures and make arrests.
Lately, Hammouchi led, supervised and monitored simultaneous operations carried out by the Central Judicial Research Office in several Moroccan cities, during which they managed to dismantle a terrorist cell and seize equipment that its members had in their possession.
Any neutral observer can’t but applaud the many decisions made by Hammouchi. These decisions combine strictness, transparency, and humanitarian loads as well, and respond to the pulse of the street in addition to the positive and rapid interaction with the complaints of citizens.