A few weeks after the tragedy in Melilia, the Spanish Interior Ministry showed, on August 15, its desire to “renovate” the Barrio Chino border post separating the enclave from the province of Nador.
The technicians from the Spanish Ministry of the Interior are studying reform of the border post of Barrio Chino, a hamlet separating Nador from the enclave of Melilia, we learned from the Spanish newspaper El Periódico de España (EPE).
“The worst border crossing in Europe”
According to this media, the government of Pedro Sánchez wants to take advantage of the “great agreement” which marks relations between the two countries at present, with a view to starting “one of the last measures to be taken on the border with Morocco”, specifying that the Iberian kingdom will take care of the bill with the support of European funds. For the Spanish national police, quoted by EPE, Barrio Chino is the “worst border crossing in Europe”.
Before the closure of the border posts between Morocco and the Spanish enclave in 2018, this passage (still closed) was dedicated to the flow of contraband to the national territory, while regular passenger traffic was carried out through the Beni post. Ensar.
Spain would consider the installation, in this passage, of new technologies: “The Ministry of the Interior wants all the crossing points of Spain with Morocco to be equipped with two modern surveillance systems in the security corridors: facial recognition and biometric data registration”, reports EPE.
Security cooperation
Another option for the Spaniards to strengthen border surveillance: Moroccan-Spanish security cooperation. Thursday, August 11, the DGST announced the arrest, in Tetouan, of an extremist affiliated with Daech, a few days after the neutralization by the Spanish police of two former Moroccan fighters of Al Qaeda returning from Syria, on the basis of information provided by the Moroccan DGST.
Anti-terrorist collaboration is therefore an ideal situation. “During the diplomatic crisis, it was not interrupted (security cooperation, editor’s note), only there were no photos,” a source from the Spanish Interior Ministry told EPE.
When the elements of the BCIJ completed the capture of the jihadist in Tetouan, the director general of the national police of the Iberian kingdom, Francisco Pardo Piqueras, had just said goodbye to his Moroccan counterpart Abdellatif Hammouchi. An official visit to Morocco, which had started 24 hours earlier.
This visit, widely relayed by the national press but little commented on the other side of the strait, let’s predict a reinforcement this autumn of the anti-jihadist “pincer” of Spain and Morocco. “But it’s not just terrorism: organized crime is just as worrying,” concludes EPE, citing a security source in Madrid.
