Embedding Pegasus in Sánchez’s cell phone or humiliating Aznar, some of his attacks
This rhetorical question was posed to me during a casual conversation by a friend in the intelligence world. We were talking about how Morocco had broken an unwritten rule between friendly countries and spied on President Pedro Sánchez and several of his ministers in a completely unfriendly gesture. Has the government expelled or, at least, taken punitive measures against the delegate in Spain of the Directorate General for Studies and Documentation (DGED), based in its embassy in Madrid?
Relations between Spanish and Moroccan intelligence services have always been complicated, as have relations between their political leaders. The neighbors on the other side are always fighting for more political concessions, and they are doing so with all the weapons at their disposal, no matter what. They know that since the advent of democracy, the Spanish authorities are reluctant to take action when they step out of line.
Morocco’s revenge on Aznar
Ask José María Aznar. In 2008, it was learned that the French Minister of Justice, Rachida Dati, was pregnant, but it was not known who would be the father of the child. The rumor mill speculated and speculated, but the names of the supposed contestants did not appear. In September, the newspaper L’Observateur du Maroc claimed that the father was former President Aznar. Aznar flatly denied it, but some people didn’t believe him.
It was later discovered that the editor of this newspaper, Ahmed Charai, was collaborating with the DGED and had participated in the purchase of American, British and French journalists with the aim of making them publish information linking the Polisario Front to jihadist terrorism. Experts then confirmed their suspicions that the news of the Datri-Aznar relationship was an invention promoted by Yassine Mansouri, the director of the DGED, in charge of foreign espionage by King Mohammed VI, who shared with him the office of school and on which he depends directly. The motive is none other than the humiliation that Aznar inflicted on the king in July 2002 after he had ordered the invasion of the island of Perijil, at a time when the United States, under Bush, was closer to Spain than to Morocco.
Morocco’s spy chief and the genocide
Moreover, in 2007, Mansouri became the target of judge Baltasar Garzón, still at the Audiencia Nacional. He considered himself competent to investigate the genocide of Sahrawi opponents by thirteen senior Moroccan officials, including the director of the DGED. In this case, the director of the CNI at the time, Alberto Saiz, was determined to curb the action so as not to displease his Moroccan colleague, who emerged unscathed.
Efforts by the CNI in 2013 to get the government to expel the president of the Union of Islamic Cultural Centers of Catalonia, Noureddin Ziani, from Spain also had no impact on bilateral relations. The Spanish spies had let him act knowing that he was paid by the DGED every month. But he could not close his eyes when he established too cordial relations with Convergencia Democrática de Cataluña, who wanted him to get involved in winning the vote of the Islamic communities in favor of independence. A very serious interference by Morocco in an internal Spanish problem. Expelled and that’s it.
In addition to these more recent cases, other older ones bear witness to Morocco’s constant efforts to spy on us. To name just one, in 1990 their espionage was discovered to have a mole in the Foreign Office. It was revealed by a leak of the contents of a secret meeting between Minister Francisco Fernández Ordoñez and the head of foreign relations of the Polisario Front, Bachir Mustafa Sayyed.
As I said at the beginning, no one has stopped Morocco’s aggressive actions. There was not even a leak of Spanish discontent with the DGED, which Macron’s French executive did when Mansouri’s spies planted Pegasus on them.
