Tags : Morocco, Spain, Germany, espionage, Hirak, Rif, DGED, Moroccan secret services, Western Sahara, Polisario Front, José María Aznar, Rachida Dati, Ahmed Charaï,
Working for Morocco? Spain Extradites a Suspected Spy to Germany
A Moroccan man is suspected of spying on members of an opposition protest movement in Germany since at least January 2022. He was arrested in Spain in early December and, after being detained pending extradition, was transferred to Germany. His accomplice has already been convicted.
Officials from the Federal Criminal Police Office arrested the suspected Moroccan spy at Frankfurt Airport. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office in Karlsruhe accuses him of working for a Moroccan intelligence service since at least January 2022.
According to the allegations, the man has been spying on supporters of the so-called Hirak movement since January 2022. This is a Moroccan opposition protest movement. The Moroccan national had been imprisoned in Spain since December 1, 2024, based on a European arrest warrant, the authorities further announced. From there, he was transferred to Germany on Wednesday to stand trial. A Federal Court of Justice investigating judge ordered his pre-trial detention. The man’s age was not disclosed.
The accused had been working with another man who was tasked by the Moroccan Directorate of External Intelligence (DGED), according to the federal prosecutor in its statement. The accomplice transmitted the information he had gathered to his commanding officers. In return, according to earlier reports, the intelligence service covered the accused’s travel expenses, amounting to around €5,000. At the time, the prosecutor’s office stated that these funds were also used for private purposes.
The Federal Criminal Police arrested this man in the Cologne area in November 2022. According to reports, he has already been legally convicted and sentenced to one year and nine months in prison, suspended, for gathering information on supporters of the Hirak movement in Germany. He had therefore acted on behalf of the Moroccan Directorate of External Intelligence (DGED) and reported his findings to senior officers.
As Germany’s highest prosecutor, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office is responsible for espionage cases as well as matters related to terrorism and international criminal law. Most recently, for example, it has brought charges against alleged agents who were said to have worked for the intelligence services of China, Russia, and Turkey.
Source: Movement for New Democracy
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The Saharawi Representative in Germany Spied on by Morocco
The email account of Mohamed Ali Zerouali, also known as Jamal Zakaria, was monitored by members of the Moroccan Embassy in Germany, according to a confidential letter sent on May 9, 2013, by Morocco’s ambassador to Germany, Omar Zniber.
« The former representative of the Polisario Front in Germany operated from his home, making extensive use of email. This method allowed us to remain well-informed about his activities. On the other hand, the new representative prefers direct contacts and a more discreet approach, » noted the same source.
The espionage activities of the Moroccan embassies in Germany did not escape the attention of German authorities. In February 2012, German police arrested Mohammed B., a 56-year-old tasked with monitoring the activities of the Polisario Front’s representative in Germany. He had been paid €22,800 for this mission, according to German justice.
However, the most publicized Moroccan espionage case was that of Redouane Lemhaoui, a 42-year-old Dutch policeman of Moroccan origin. In 2008, he was arrested by Dutch police after it was discovered that he had been recruited by agents of the Moroccan secret services operating under diplomatic cover at the Moroccan consulate in Amsterdam. He had provided sensitive information extracted from Dutch Ministry of Interior files.
The incident resulted in the recall of two members of the Moroccan embassy in the Netherlands.
It is worth noting that Morocco spent over €3 million on equipment for monitoring websites and email communications, according to statistics revealed following a hack of the Hacking Team company, which supplied this equipment to the Moroccan government. This information was confirmed by Wikileaks revelations.
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Trial of an Alleged Moroccan Spy Begins in Germany
DUESSELDORF (GERMANY), 24 (DPA/EP)
The trial of a 36-year-old Moroccan national accused of spying on members of the Moroccan opposition movement « Hirak » living in Germany began on Monday in Düsseldorf, Germany.
The German federal prosecutor’s office filed charges against the suspect for conducting intelligence activities for a foreign state. The suspect admitted before the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court that he had provided information about the Algerian side of the protests and its supporters.
The Hirak movement emerged in 2016 to denounce corruption and abuses by authorities in Morocco following public outrage over the death of Mohssine Fikri, who was crushed by a garbage truck compactor while attempting to prevent police from destroying the fish he was selling in Imzouren, near Al Hoceima.
« I supported the Hirak protest movement from Europe as a blogger by publishing critical information on my Facebook page, » the accused stated in court.
He also explained that at the beginning of 2020, he went to the Moroccan Consulate General in Düsseldorf to obtain a certificate of good conduct in order to travel to his home country.
According to the indictment, an intelligence agent contacted and recruited him at that time. Since then, he had collected and provided information on opposition members as requested, in exchange for travel allowances amounting to nearly €5,000.
Europa Press, 24/07/2023
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In Search of the Moroccan Spy, by Ignacio Cembrero
Baghdad A. is a 59-year-old Moroccan who navigated easily within the Maghreb community in Germany. He was collecting « information on events organized by opposition groups, » according to the German prosecutor. In 2007, he offered to work for his country’s intelligence services, claiming to have « a vast network of contacts » within the Moroccan immigrant community. They recruited him. Five years later, on December 7, prosecutors in Karlsruhe charged him with « activities in support of foreign intelligence services. »
Baghdad A. is the fourth Moroccan arrested for espionage in Germany since 2011. All of them were dedicated to monitoring and reporting on the activities of their 230,000 fellow Moroccan nationals living in Germany, except for Mohamed B., 56, who was arrested last February in Berlin and had specialized in monitoring members of the Polisario Front. According to the prosecutors, he had received 22,800 euros for this.
Of all the Moroccan agents uncovered in recent years in Europe, the one who generated the most attention in 2008 was Redouane Lemhaouli, 42, a police officer of Moroccan origin who had gained access to the Dutch Ministry of the Interior’s files. There, he obtained information about « actions against the King of Morocco, » « terrorism, » and « arms trafficking, » which he communicated to the spies who had recruited him under diplomatic cover.
The case of « Re » – the nickname his colleagues had passed on to the police – had such an impact partly because this agent had been close to Princess Maxima, the wife of the Prince of Orange, as well as a member of the Dutch government. The princess had sat next to him in the front row during a ceremony at which 57 immigrants, most of whom were of Moroccan origin, received certificates allowing them to work as ground staff at Rotterdam Airport. « Re » had trained them.
A few months later, he was dismissed from the police force and sentenced to 240 hours of community service. The Dutch Foreign Minister, Maxime Verhagen, sent a letter to parliamentarians denouncing « the sectors and services exerting influence on citizens of Moroccan origin. »
In total, since 2008, there have been 10 arrests and/or prosecutions of agents, as well as expulsions of Moroccan diplomats in Europe – Mauritania also expelled an eleventh agent last year… a figure only surpassed by Russia, which expelled 31 agents from the Old Continent.
The 11 Moroccan agents worked for the General Directorate for Studies and Documentation (DGED), the external intelligence service headed by Yassine Mansouri, 50, the first civilian to hold this position. It is the only intelligence service formally dependent on the Moroccan royal palace, and it has even exceeded its traditional role of espionage and intelligence gathering. The DGED is also an instrument of Moroccan diplomacy, and the personality of its head makes this quite clear and explains it even better.
Mansouri is part of the king’s inner circle of close collaborators, having studied alongside him at the Royal College. He is also the only one among the monarch’s inner circle who has never been involved in a political or economic scandal.
His loyalty to the future monarch was even the cause of his dismissal in 1997 from the position he held within the Ministry of the Interior, which was then headed by the former minister, the late Mr. Driss Basri. The latter suspected him of spying for the crown prince, whom he himself was monitoring on behalf of his father, Hassan II. Nevertheless, Mansouri was the only one among the prince’s childhood friends that Basri considered competent. He praised Hassan II for his strength and work ethic, and the king had sent him to the United States in 1992 to be trained by the FBI.
Born in Bejaâd, in the center of the country, the son of an alim (Muslim scholar), Mansouri received a religious education, which was somewhat problematic for his brother’s leftist friendships until he was offered a place at the Royal College. Even today, he remains a pious man who performs his prayers, does not drink alcohol, does not smoke, and avoids ostentation.
His desert journey ended after the enthronement of King Mohammed VI, who, in 1999, appointed him as the Director-General of MAP, the country’s official news agency, which he left in 2003 to return to the Ministry of the Interior, entering this time through the front door. For two years, he headed the most important department in the ministry, from which Basri had dismissed him, the Directorate of General Affairs. From there, he took his first steps into the world of espionage and parallel diplomacy.
For instance, Mansouri was a member of the Moroccan delegation that went to New York in 2007 to present the proposal for autonomy for the Sahara to the UN Secretary-General. He also met several times with the Polisario to negotiate and secretly established contacts in Paris in 2007 with the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tzipi Livni. In 2008, he hosted in Rabat the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, David Welch, who expressed concern about the fragility of the Tunisian regime and the « greed » of dictator Ben Ali, which was later revealed in diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks. Three years later, Ben Ali was overthrown, and Mansouri was among the few who had made an accurate diagnosis of the situation in Tunisia.
When it was established in 1973, the DGED specialized in monitoring the exiled enemies of the Alaouite monarchy, then the historical leftists, and today, Islamists and other Sahrawi separatists. However, as Moroccan emigration grew significantly, the DGED also sought to monitor it to prevent the spread of extremism within this community and to ensure its loyalty to the throne.
According to a report from the National Intelligence Center (CNI) sent in May 2011 by its director, General Felix Sanz, to three ministers, Morocco developed a « large-scale strategy » in Spain. « The objective is to extend its influence and increase control over the Moroccan community under the guise of religion, » the report specifies. This control is exercised by Rabat, according to the CNI, « through its embassy and consulates (…), as well as the associated personnel, » namely agents from the DGED benefiting from diplomatic immunity and informants recruited on the ground. The Hassan II Foundation also collaborates in this; chaired by Princess Lalla Meryem, the elder sister of Mohammed VI, the budget of this foundation is not subject to parliamentary oversight.
Evidence of the DGED’s interest in religion was provided by Mansouri’s intervention in November 2008 before a group of imams from Spain and Italy invited to Marrakesh by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs. A year earlier, Mansouri had visited Mallorca to meet his Spanish counterpart at the time, Alberto Saiz, and warn him about what the Moroccan considered to be « playing with fire, » namely the Spanish support for the « Tablighists » in Ceuta, an Islamic movement of Indian origin, to the detriment of the Maliki Islam that dominates in Morocco.
Perhaps because they wish to avoid tensions with Rabat or in the name of cooperation in the fight against terrorism – the DGED had helped the CNI resolve the kidnapping of three Catalan volunteers by Al-Qaeda in Mali – southern European countries like Spain, France, and Italy, which host the largest number of Moroccan emigrants, neither expel nor arrest Moroccan agents. « It did indeed happen, but no more, » however, points out a former CNI collaborator who had served in the Maghreb.
In 2010, Rabat expelled three Spanish agents working in Morocco under diplomatic cover; but over the past quarter-century, there had only been one disclosed case of Moroccan espionage in Spain: the infiltration of a mole within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1990, who obtained a report on a conversation between the foreign minister at the time, Francisco Fernandez Ordonez, and a representative of the Polisario Front.
Read the article in Spanish on elpais.com
Source: Saharadoc, 8 jan 2013
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Discovery of a Moroccan Espionage Plot at the Moroccan Consulate in Madrid
MADRID – The Spanish National Intelligence Center (CNI) uncovered, just before the Covid-19 pandemic, a Moroccan espionage plot operating from the Moroccan consulate in Madrid, following a multi-year investigation into a consular agent accused of having « collaborated » with the current head of Moroccan intelligence services in Spain, according to Spanish media reports on Monday.
According to the media, the consular agent recruited by Moroccan intelligence services was denied a request for Spanish citizenship last month, but to date, he has not been expelled from Spain. The judiciary rejected, for the first time, granting citizenship to this administrative officer at the Moroccan consulate in Madrid, directly implicating the head of Moroccan intelligence in Spain, who operates from the Moroccan embassy in Madrid.
The primary Spanish intelligence service asserts that it is « certain of the close collaboration of ‘Don Gabriel’ (a pseudonym given to this agent to conceal his name), since his arrival in 2016 at the Moroccan consulate in Madrid as a local agent, with the current head of Moroccan intelligence in Spain. »
The judges fully validate the report from Spanish intelligence. This is not a compilation of « mere assumptions about the person in question. » The data it provides is « explicit and concrete enough, » states the ruling, which effectively ends 12 years of procedures for « Don Gabriel » to become Spanish.
According to the judgment, the CNI began investigating him in 2011, a year after he began working as an interpreter at the Moroccan consulate in Seville, long before he was transferred to Madrid in 2016.
The contentious-administrative chambers of the High National Court regularly reject the granting of Spanish citizenship to Moroccan immigrants living in Spain based on reports from the CNI that invoke « national security » reasons, without going into details.
« This mention is generally not related to alleged ties with terrorist organizations, but with the Moroccan intelligence services operating in Spain, » the media explain, recalling a similar case in Las Palmas where « Fabio, » a Moroccan businessman based in the archipelago, was denied his request for Spanish citizenship for maintaining, between 2008 and 2016, « a relationship of full collaboration with foreign Moroccan intelligence. »
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Moroccan Espionage in Spain: From Pegasus to Heart-Related Smear Campaigns Against Aznar
The malicious Pegasus program, introduced into the mobile phones of several government members, is a new episode of the intrusion of Moroccan intelligence services.
By Ignacio Cembrero
The phone « taps » suffered by Pedro Sánchez’s government are, for now, the latest episode in the long history of Moroccan espionage in Spain. The former director of the National Intelligence Center (CNI), Paz Esteban, clearly stated that the neighboring country was spying on Spain during her appearance on May 5 before the Congress’s reserved spending committee, five days before she was dismissed. However, Esteban did not directly accuse Morocco of contaminating government devices with Pegasus, according to sources who attended the closed-door meeting.
The most grotesque episode of espionage, or rather Moroccan revenge, is the one suffered by José María Aznar. The former prime minister ordered in 2002 the expulsion of the small Moroccan contingent that had settled on the Persil islet, thus humiliating Mohammed VI. In 2008, four years after leaving the executive, the Moroccan weekly « L’Observateur du Maroc » headlined that the former president was the father of the daughter that Rachida Dati, the French Minister of Justice at the time, was expecting. To give credibility to this slander, the Spanish weekly « Interviú » received several photos showing Aznar and Dati saying goodbye amicably in Paris, in front of the door of a restaurant.
« ‘L’Observateur du Maroc’ is owned by Ahmed Charai, the head of public relations at the DGED, according to several documents leaked in 2014 on social media. Aznar sued him, and in 2011, the Provincial Court of Madrid sentenced him to pay 90,000 euros for ‘moral damage’. Today, it is known that the father of the young Zohra is the French businessman Dominique Desseigne. These leaked cables from 2014 also include the names of a Spanish member of PSOE and a Moroccan woman married to an ambassador from Spain, as regular collaborators of the secret service led by Yasin Mansouri. These revelations had no consequences for any of them.
Morocco has experience in electronic surveillance, which it started applying in 2011 on the leaders of the February 20th movement (20-F), the local version of the Arab Spring. At that time, Rabat was buying malicious programs from the Italian company Hacking Team. With them, it hacked Mamfakinch, the reference site for the youth of 20-F. The contact form on this website contained ‘malware’ that, once downloaded, would steal from the user’s computer ‘everything they were interested in,’ as explained during a conference in 2013 by David Barroso, a cybersecurity expert and CEO of CounterCraft. At that time, the French press revealed that Rabat had also acquired other programs from French companies Amesys and Nexa Technologies. A year ago, a Parisian investigating judge charged four leaders of these two companies with ‘complicity in torture’ in Egypt and Libya.
Sánchez’s appearance The Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, will not mention Morocco during his appearance today in Congress, dedicated to the malicious Pegasus program introduced into his mobile phone at the end of May 2021, at the height of the Spanish-Moroccan crisis. His Ministers of Defense and the Interior, who were also surveilled by the ‘malware’ made by the Israeli company NSO Group, did not accuse the Moroccan intelligence services nor criticize the Israeli company for allowing the misuse of its surveillance program.
Sánchez’s appearance does not bring an end to the Pegasus affair in Spain. Dozens – perhaps more than 100 – of Catalan independence supporters are waiting for the Citizen Lab laboratory, associated with the University of Toronto, to provide them with the results of the forensic analysis of their mobile phones. If the results show that they have been infected, they will likely join the ongoing legal actions and the political controversy will be reignited.
Furthermore, more than 200 Spanish mobile phones were already targeted by Moroccan intelligence agencies in 2019, according to a revelation by the British newspaper The Guardian on May 3. Forbidden Stories, the association of 17 media outlets that, in July 2021, published an initial list of 10,000 mobile phones infected by Pegasus through Moroccan services, is now preparing, in collaboration with a Madrid-based newspaper, to disclose the names of the owners of these two hundred Spanish phones. Among them, it is already known that there are phones belonging to Aminatou Haidar, a Sahrawi activist; Ali Lmrabet, a Moroccan YouTuber based in Barcelona and a critic of his country’s regime; and the phone of the journalist who is writing these lines.
What are the objectives of Moroccan espionage in Spain? The director of the CNI has not explained this, but they are well known. In addition to the Spanish government’s activities related to the Maghreb, they are interested in detecting radical elements within the Moroccan immigration community; monitoring the activities of moderate Islamic opposition to the Alaouite monarchy, starting with the Justice and Charity movement; the Rifian exile that arrived in Spain from 2017; the Polisario Front and the support it receives from civil society; and journalists covering Moroccan affairs.
Socialist politicians and members of the People’s Party typically use diplomatic language when discussing relations with Morocco, both when they are in government and in opposition. In contrast, all non-political officials related to Spain’s security, from intelligence agencies to the armed forces, speak in very different terms. They describe at length the Moroccan harassment in the airspace over the Sahara or southern peninsula, in the waters of the Zaffarines Islands, or the aggression and boldness of their intelligence services in Spanish territory.
History of Espionage The first time a Moroccan espionage operation in Spain was revealed to the press after the democratic transition was in May 1990. General Emilio Alonso Manglano, director of Cesid – the precursor to the CNI intelligence agency – called the undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, Inocencio Arias, to inform him that he was certain that an encrypted telegram from the ministry was in the possession of the Moroccan embassy in Madrid.
The telegram summarized a conversation that took place on May 16 of that year between Foreign Minister Francisco Fernández Ordoñez and Bachir Mustafa Sayed, the second-in-command of the Polisario Front. An investigation was opened to find out who the mole was in Fernández Ordoñez’s circle who provided the document to the Moroccans, but it led to no conclusions. This was still the time when Spanish ministers received the leaders of this Sahrawi movement fighting for the independence of the former Spanish colony. Today, they are no longer received either by the government or the PSOE, so as not to upset the Moroccan authorities.
The Cesid director called the undersecretary for Foreign Affairs in 1990 to inform him that an encrypted telegram was in Rabat’s possession.
This espionage incident was a « minor transgression » compared to the one that prompted General Félix Sanz Roldán, director of the CNI, to expel from Spain in May 2013 Nureddine Ziani, the only Moroccan spy whose expulsion was made public. Ziani went beyond all limits in the eyes of the CNI because he combined traditional Moroccan intelligence work – monitoring and controlling Muslim immigration in Catalonia – with involvement with the separatists of Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC).
After working for the Moroccan consulate in Barcelona, he founded the Union of Islamic Cultural Centers of Catalonia, which was based in the Nous Catalans Foundation, created by the CDC and chaired by Artur Mas. The neighboring country, argued Sanz Roldán in his letter requesting the Ministry of the Interior to expel Ziani, « had devised [a strategy] to have a tool that would give it the ability to influence and pressure the Spanish administration when it deemed appropriate, thus disturbing Spain’s foreign policy. »
Ziani was expelled through the land border of Melilla. An official car picked him up from the Moroccan side, and shortly after, it was learned that he held a position in the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, which works hand in hand with the General Directorate of Studies and Documentation (DGED), Morocco’s external intelligence agency. This agency informs the Ministry about which Islamic associations in Europe should receive its support. The Muslim clergy in Ceuta and Melilla is among its priorities.
No further expulsions from Spain of Moroccan agents or diplomats who collaborated with the DGED have been made public, although this has most likely occurred, but discreetly. No spy from the neighboring country has been prosecuted either. Unlike Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium have made public the expulsions of agents and diplomats – Brussels, for instance, got rid of a female spy for the first time in 2018 – and some have even been prosecuted and sentenced. Between 2008 and 2012, there were 10 expulsions or prosecutions of Moroccan agents within the EU, a number only surpassed at the time by Russia.
Rabat has also discreetly expelled some Spanish agents. The year 2010 was the most prolific for expulsions, which targeted two military personnel with diplomatic status assigned to the Spanish consulate in Tétouan, and a third assigned to Nador. The latter had been tasked with combating ETA in the Basque Country, and his superiors subsequently sent him to a quieter post where he didn’t last long.
The network of Moroccan espionage in Spain is highlighted by the repeated refusals of Spanish nationality applications by the National Court at the request of the CNI. Until nine years ago, it was enough for the CNI to indicate that the Moroccan applicant for Spanish nationality represented a danger to national security for the judges to reject the application. The Supreme Court ruled that more data on the candidate’s danger level needed to be provided. Since then, reports sent by the CNI to the National Court sometimes indicate that some nationality applicants are « linked to Morocco’s foreign intelligence » and that this is why their applications should be rejected.
Moulay Hicham, the king of Morocco’s first cousin, nicknamed the « red prince » due to his criticism of how Mohamed VI governs the country, was also monitored during his travels abroad to know what he was doing and whom he was meeting. He visited Madrid in late January 2015 to present his book Journal of an Exiled Prince (Editorial Península). The DGED was apparently interested in knowing if he would meet this journalist but failed to photograph them together.
It had to entrust this task to an apprentice spy who got the date wrong and took photos of another dinner in a more modest restaurant than those Moulay Hicham usually frequents. Despite this, the Moroccan secret service deemed it essential to prove that the « red prince » and the journalist had shared a table in Madrid. It resorted to a photo montage published on February 12, 2015, on the front page of the digital newspaper Le 360, which is closest to the royal palace. The image shows Moulay Hicham in the café of the Fouquet’s Hotel in Paris, supposedly sitting next to the journalist. For this deception, they used a photo of the journalist taken a few weeks earlier at the Palais du Pharo in Marseille, which had been published in the Parisian newspaper Libération.
El Confidencial, 26/05/2022 – 05:00
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