Last November, Abderrahim El M., who works for the Dutch body responsible for security and the fight against terrorism, was arrested at Schiphol airport on his way to Morocco. He had on him data carriers containing more than twenty secret state documents of the Netherlands.
Authorities believe Abderrahim gave these state secrets to Morocco’s spy service. He is accused of having printed these secret documents using the name of one of his colleagues and of having traveled to Morocco several times. On-site, he would have been in contact with a senior official in the fight against Moroccan espionage.
The documents in question include highly sensitive information from Dutch intelligence services on Moroccan spies in the Netherlands. In his phone, we also found the contacts of four agents of this Moroccan secret service, proof, according to the police, that he communicated directly with them.
Abderrahim denies being a spy for Morocco. He worked for a long time as an interpreter and analyst for the Dutch security agency, participating in major terrorism investigations. His lawyer maintains that Abderrahim is loyal to the Netherlands and that he is the victim of a frame-up.
This case also led to the arrest of another person, a 35-year-old woman from Gouda who had worked for the same security organization and then for the police. At Abderrahim’s home, hundreds of classified documents were discovered. Analysis of these papers is still ongoing, and so far, 928 documents have been identified as secret.
