Mohamed Abdelaziz (Arabic: محمد عبد العزيز‎‎; 17 August 1947 – 31 May 2016) was the 3rd Secretary General of the Polisario Front and President of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic from 1976 until his death in 2016. He spoke Arabic and French.

Abdelaziz (full birth name: Mohamed Abdelaziz ben Khalili ben Mohamed al-Bachir Er-Rguibi) was born in Marrakesh or in Smara into a Sahrawi family of an eastern Reguibat subtribe, migrating between Western Sahara, Mauritania, western Algeria and southern Morocco.

He was the son of Khalili Ben Mohamed Al-Bachir Rguibi, who was a member of the Moroccan Liberation Army and the Royal Moroccan Army. Abdelaziz's father lived in Morocco with a part of his family and was a member of the Royal Advisory Council for Saharan Affairs. His father held two transport licences in Morocco for buses serving Rabat–Casablanca–Essaouira. The first license was given to him by Hassan II in 1983 and the second by Mohammed VI in 2002.

His brother is Mohamed Lahbib Rguibi, lawyer of many Sahrawi human rights defenders such as Aminatou Haidar or Naama Asfari, and former "disappeared" in Moroccan prisons between 1976 and 1991.

As a student in the Mohammed V University of Rabat, he gravitated towards Sahrawi nationalism, and became one of the founding members of the Polisario Front, a Sahrawi independence movement in Western Sahara with strong Arab socialist ideas which launched a few attacks against Spanish colonialism in the Spanish Sahara in 1973, but that he was more notable for fighting against Mauritania and Morocco.

From 1976 until his death he was Secretary-General of the organization, replacing Mahfoud Ali Beiba, who had taken the post as interim Secretary-General after El-Ouali Mustapha Sayed was killed in action in Mauritania. He was also the president of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), whose first constitution he was involved in drafting. He lived in exile in the Sahrawi refugee camps in the Tindouf Province of western Algeria.

According to some former members of Polisario now aligned with Morocco, Abdelaziz was "chosen" by Algeria at the top of the organization although he did not belong to the very closed circle of the organization's founders and "he always considered himself to be their man."

In April 2000, the Moroccan weekly newspaper Le Journal Hebdomadaire "crossed a political redline" by printing an interview with Abdelaziz, and was briefly banned from publishing. The Moroccan Ministry of Communications responded by banning both Le Journal and Assahifa Al Ousbouia, though the latter had not run the interview in question. A Ministry spokesperson stated that the reasons for the papers' banning were "excesses in [their] editorial line concerning the question of Morocco’s territorial integrity" and "collusion with foreign interests".

Political profile

Abdelaziz was considered a secular nationalist and steered the Polisario and the Sahrawi republic towards political compromise, notably in backing the United Nations' Baker Plan in 2003. Under his leadership, Polisario also abandoned its early Arab socialist orientation, in favor of a Western Sahara organized along liberal democratic lines. He is, however to date, the 2nd longest ruling non-royal leader as was the President of the Sahrawi Republic for nearly 35 years.

The Organization of African Unity seated Western Sahara for the first time in 1982, despite Morocco's vehement objections. In 1985, Abdelaziz was elected as Vice-President of the OAU at its 21st summit, effectively signalling that the Sahrawi Republic would be a permanent OAU member despite the controversy. In 2002, he was elected as vice-president of the African Union, at its first summit.

There was some criticism against Abdelaziz from within the Polisario for preventing reforms inside the movement, and for insisting on a diplomatic course which had gained few concessions from Morocco, rather than re-launching the armed struggle favored by many within the movement. The only supposedly opposition group is the Front Polisario Khat al-Shahid, which states that it wants to restore the legacy of his predecessor, El-Ouali Mustapha Sayed. Abdelaziz specifically denied the existence of such a group; he maintained that only the Polisario exists in the camps. Others consider that, despite his militant rhetoric, Abdelaziz cannot order a resumption of fighting without the approval of the Algerian government.

Abdelaziz condemned terrorism, insisting the Polisario's guerrilla war is to be a "clean struggle" (that is, not targeting private citizens' safety or property); he however acknowledged mistreatment to Moroccan prisoners of war as well as attacking civilian populations in Moroccan cities by the Polisario Front, justifying this as necessary evils in times of war and that the Polisario had to use every means in order to defend the Sahrawi population from the enemy.

He sent formal condolences to the afflicted governments after the terrorist attacks in New York City, Madrid, London and Kampala.

Also, as head of the SADR, Abdrlaziz signed the OAU Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism at the 36th summit in Algiers, July 14, 1999, the Dakar Declaration against Terrorism in October 2001 and the additional Protocol to the previous OAU's Convention on Terrorism at the 3rd session of the Assembly of the African Union in Addis Ababa, July 8, 2004.

Awards and nominations

In 2001, he was reportedly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize

In December 2005, as leader of the Polisario Front, he received Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de España's "Human Rights International Prize".