A recent ruling by the National High Court denying Spanish nationality to a citizen of Moroccan origin reveals that the National Intelligence Center (CNI) detected in 2010 the existence of a Moroccan espionage network that was collecting information on “the Front Polisario and [la] Moroccan colony resident in Spain”. The ruling, dated May 31 and to which EL PAÍS has had access, emphasizes that this citizen allegedly had contact with a “chief” of the Moroccan intelligence services, whose identity he does not reveal. In the last 11 years, the Spanish courts have rejected on at least five other occasions granting nationality to as many citizens from the North African country due to the existence of CNI reports warning that the applicants had spied on Rabat .
In June 2021, in the midst of the diplomatic crisis between Morocco and Spain due to the hospitalization in Logroño of the leader of the Polisario Front and president of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), Brahim Gali, a confidential CNI document already alerted the Government of the intense Moroccan espionage activity in Spain against this organization. Specifically, that report detailed that the Moroccan intelligence services had activated a double “judicial and media” strategy in order to “harass” Gali and “hinder his mobility”.
The CNI then assured that Rabat was using “enough resources, including financial ones” to “put pressure on the Government of Spain to achieve a favorable position for Morocco in the dispute over Western Sahara.” In March 2022, Pedro Sánchez abandoned Spain’s traditional position of neutrality in the Sahara conflict, which had been maintained for 47 years, and sided with Rabat, considering its autonomy proposal for the former colony “as the most serious, realistic and credible for the resolution of the dispute”. Shortly after this latest announcement, it was learned that the mobile phones of Sánchez himself, of the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska; the head of Defense, Margarita Robles, and the then head of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya —who would leave the Executive the following July— had suffered attacks with the Pegasus spyware.
The recent judgment of the Third Section of the Administrative Litigation Chamber of the National Court confirms these Moroccan activities in Spain. The judicial resolution details that the supposed collaborator of the Moroccan secret service began in May 2010 the procedures to obtain Spanish nationality. To do this, he alleged the long time that he had been living legally in Spain -22 years- and that during all that time he had not been “arrested on a single occasion for a crime, not even having an administrative sanction.”
The applicant concluded that these data were proof of “his perfect social, cultural and family integration in Spain”, which was emphasized by the fact that he lived with his wife and two children, and that these three already had Spanish nationality. It also argued that both the judge in charge of the Civil Registry – who is in charge of interviewing the applicant to “examine whether he adapts to the Spanish culture and lifestyle” – as well as the Prosecutor’s Office and the General Directorate of the Police had reported favorably so that be given nationality. The first had even highlighted that he spoke the Spanish language “correctly.”
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Despite this, the request was rejected on April 10, 2019 by the General Directorate of Registries and Notaries, under the Ministry of Justice. The reason was the incorporation into the nationalization file of a report ―whose authorship the sentence does not specify, but which, according to what this newspaper has been able to confirm in police sources, was prepared by the CNI― in which it was advised against granting this Moroccan citizen Spanish nationality “for reasons of public order or national interest”.
The sentence stressed that, according to this secret service document, there was “evidence” that the Moroccan citizen collaborated with “the Moroccan intelligence services since 2010, when he maintained contact with their chief.” This fact was considered sufficient to consider that the applicant had not “justified” the “good civic conduct” required by article 22.4 of the Civil Code to grant Spanish nationality and it was denied.
The Moroccan citizen presented in July of that year a contentious-administrative challenge that has now been rejected by the National Court with the support of the State Attorney, representing the Ministry of Justice. In the ruling, the court considers that the CNI report is sufficient reason to deny the Moroccan citizen’s request, considering that it shows that he does not meet the “integration” requirement despite the fact that in the file there were other reports that showed favorable.
It is not the first time that a ruling by the National Court has brought to light the alleged espionage activities of the North African country in Spain. The last case was known in September. Then, a court denied the request to a worker from the Moroccan consulate in Madrid who the Spanish secret service had been investigating since 2011 as an alleged “local agent” of espionage in the Maghreb country. Then, the CNI report accused this worker of maintaining “close ties with his country of origin” and “with the current head of the Moroccan intelligence services in Spain.” The Moroccan citizen denied it.
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