[9] In 1952, he earned a master's degree in public law from the University of Bordeaux before serving in the French Navy on board the Jeanne d'Arc cruiser.

[14] In 1943, a twelve-year-old Hassan attended the Casablanca Conference at the Anfa Hotel along with his father, where he met United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and General Charles de Gaulle.

[4] Following Morocco's independence from France, his father named him commander-in-chief of the newly founded Royal Moroccan Armed Forces in April 1956.

[36] It was however, at its worst during the period from the 1960s to the late 1980s, which was labelled as the "years of lead"[37][38] and saw thousands of dissidents jailed, killed, exiled or forcibly disappeared.

[39][40] Hassan imprisoned many members of the National Union of Popular Forces and sentenced some party leaders, including Mehdi Ben Barka, to death.

[5] A series of student protests began on 21 March 1965 in Casablanca, and devolved into general riots the following day; the resulting violent repression led to hundreds of deaths.

"[5][41][42] In June, he dissolved parliament and suspended the constitution of 1962, declaring a state of exception that would last more than five years, in which he ruled Morocco directly; however, he did not completely abolish the mechanisms of parliamentary democracy.

[43][44][5] An alleged report from the U.S. Secretary of State claimed that, during this period, "Hassan [appeared] obsessed with the preservation of his power rather than with its application toward the resolution of Morocco's multiplying domestic problems.

[5] In Rise and Kill First, Ronen Bergman points to cooperation between the Moroccan authorities and Israel's Mossad in locating Ben Barka.

[50] The attempted coup was carried out by up to 1,400 army cadets from the Ahermoumou military training academy led by General Mohamed Medbouh and Colonel M'hamed Ababou.

[50]On 16 August 1972, during a second coup attempt, six F-5 military jets from the Royal Moroccan Air Force opened fire on the king's Boeing 727 while flying at a 3 km (1.9 mi) altitude over Tétouan on the way to Rabat from Barcelona,[55][56] killing eight people on board and injuring fifty.

[57][55] 220 members of the Air Force were arrested for partaking in the coup plot, 177 of whom were acquitted, 32 were found guilty, and 11 people were sentenced to death by a military tribunal.

[50] Mohamed Amekrane, a colonel suspected to be a main part of the coup, attempted to flee to Gibraltar; however, his asylum application was declined and he was sent back to Morocco.

[63][56][62] General Mohamed Oufkir, Morocco's defense minister at the time, was suspected to have led the coup; he was later found dead from multiple gunshot wounds, with his death officially determined to be a suicide.

[71][72] Hassan also admitted Norbert Calmels [fr], a French member of the Holy See and one of his personal friends, to the Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco.

[75][76] In what was termed Operation Yachin, he negotiated for the migration of over 97,000 Moroccan Jews to Israel from 1961 to 1964 in exchange for weapons and training for Morocco's security forces and intelligence agencies.

[77] In an arrangement financed by the American Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), Hassan was paid a sum of $500,000 along with $100 for each of the first 50,000 Moroccan Jews to be migrated to Israel, and $250 for each Jewish emigrant thereafter.

[80][75] Ronen Bergman claimed in his book, Rise And Kill First, that Israeli intelligence then supplied information leading to Mehdi Ben Barka's capture and assassination.

[87] On 14 October 1963, the Sand War was declared as a result of failed negotiations over borders inherited from French colonialism between Hassan and Algeria's newly elected president Ahmed Ben Bella.

[5][91][92] During Hassan's reign, Morocco recovered the Spanish-controlled area of Ifni in 1969, and gained control of two-thirds of what was formerly Spanish Sahara through the Green March in 1975.

[93] The nationalist Polisario Front subsequently engaged in a war for control of the territory, with support from Algeria, and relations between the two countries deteriorated further as a result.

In 1988, the contract for the construction of the Great Mosque of Casablanca, a considerable project in scale, financed through compulsory contributions, was awarded to a civil engineering firm owned by Francis Bouygues, one of the most powerful businessmen in France and a personal friend of Hassan's.

[97] On 3 March 1973, Hassan announced a policy of "Moroccanization", in which state-held assets, agricultural lands, and businesses that were more than fifty percent foreign-owned were taken over and transferred to local companies and businessmen.

[101] On 23 July 1999, Hassan was admitted to the CHU Ibn Sina Hospital in Rabat for acute interstitial pneumonitis; at 16:30 (GMT), he was pronounced dead from a myocardial infarction at the age of 70.

[102][103][104] The Moroccan government ordered forty days of mourning, while entertainment and cultural events were cancelled, and public institutions and many businesses were closed upon news of the king's death.

[4] His coffin, which was covered in a cloth depicting Islamic calligraphy, was carried by his two sons, King Mohammed VI and Prince Moulay Rachid.

[111][112] Hassan was described in an official royal palace biography after his death as "well versed in the fields of architecture, medicine and technology" and that he gave his children a "strong commitment to the search for learning and a dedication to uphold the values of their country and their people".

[114][115] Later that year, on 9 November, he married Lalla Latifa Amahzoune, an ethnic Zayane and a granddaughter of Berber chief Mouha ou Hammou Zayani, during a double nuptial ceremony with his brother Prince Moulay Abdallah.