Muhammad Bassiri

Muhammad Sidi Brahim Basir محمد سيدي إبراهيم بصير
Born	1942 or October 1944 Tan Tan, Cape Juby, Spanish West Africa
Disappeared	June 18, 1970 El Aaiun, Spanish Sahara
Other names	Basiri, Bassiri
Alma mater	Cairo University, Damascus University
Movement	Movement for the Liberation of Saguia el Hamra and Wadi el Dhahab

Muhammad Sidi Brahim Sidi Embarek Basir (Arabic: سيدي سيدي إبراهيم مبارك محمد بصير‎‎; b. 1942 or October 1944 - disappeared on June 18, 1970) was a Sahrawi nationalist leader, disappeared and presumedly executed by the Spanish Legion in June 1970.

Muhammad Bassiri was born in a Sahrawi family in Tan-Tan (nowadays Southern Morocco, then part of the Cap Juby Spanish protectorate).

In 1957 he left Tan-Tan for the newly independent Morocco to attend school in Marrakesh, and proceeded to study the Quran & Arabic in Cairo, Egypt and Journalism in Damascus, Syria, where he get in touch with the Panarabism ideology. On returning to Morocco in 1966, he founded Al-Shihab (The Torch), a Sahrawi nationalist newspaper. He also worked as a journalist in Casablanca

In March 1968 he was allowed to enter to Spanish Sahara (he had tried to enter on December 1967, but he was detained and expelled), because of the closing of the newspaper by Moroccan authorities in late 1967, and settled in the city of Smara as a Quranic teacher. It was there he started to organize the anti-colonial movement known as the movement of liberation (In Arabic: Harakat Tahrir) calling for end of Spanish occupation of the Sahara. Bassiri stressed non-violence (influenced by the peaceful struggle of Gandhi in the colonized India) and wanted to bring about change through democratic action, although the ruthless colonial rule imposed by Francisco Franco's Spain forced the Harakat Tahrir to remain clandestine. Bassiri didn't want a precipitated independence, but to negotiate with the Spanish authorities

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