Madrid claims Rabat is engaging in espionage through its consulates in Spain, according to a judgement by the Supreme National Court of Appeal in the case of the rejection of a Moroccan citizenship living in Spain.
According to the Spanish newspaper “El Bobblico,” the court backed the Ministry of Justice’s decision to deny a Moroccan employee’s request for naturalisation because of his alleged connections to Moroccan intelligence. The employee was employed at the Moroccan consulate in Madrid.
According to the ruling made public on September 14, the National Intelligence Center claimed to have “evidence of the close cooperation of the employee, since his arrival in 2016 to the Moroccan consulate in Madrid as a local customer, with the current head of the Moroccan intelligence services in Spain.”
The newspaper continued, “The relationship was made known by an earlier report from the Spanish Intelligence Service, and the agency is the one who informed the General Directorate of Records, a department of the Ministry of Justice, with regard to the relationship, causing the ministry to refuse to grant him citizenship even though he has favourable reports from the Prosecutor’s Office and the Civil Registry.
The Moroccan citizen disputed the Ministry of Justice’s decision to deny him citizenship and defended himself by saying that his employment at the Moroccan consulate is administrative only and restricted to the passport department, according to the newspaper. This led to the National Court’s ruling.
According to “Lobbliko,” this is not the first instance of its kind; in 2020, a Moroccan businessman living in Las Palmas de Gran Kanaria had his citizenship denied by a Canary Islands court after the National Intelligence Center (CNI) looked into him because of his connections to Moroccan foreign intelligence.
He said in the judgement, which was released on January 27, 2020, that the businessman had worked with the Kingdom’s intelligence agency for at least eight years.
According to Madrid, this individual had a connection to the spy equipment through his cousin, who was the chief of the General Directorate of Studies and Documentation at the Rabat consulate in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, which was connected to Moroccan foreign intelligence.
After more than ten years of residence in Spain, the businessman applied for citizenship in 2013, but the Spanish intelligence service suspected him of having ties to Moroccan foreign intelligence.
The newspaper “Al-Bayes” examined various decisions made by the National Court in May of this year, in which the Spanish judiciary declined to award Moroccans Spanish citizenship in response to intelligence reports that indicated that applicants spied for Rabat.
Spanish newspaper “Elbliko” is the source.
Newspaper “Lobbliko”: a naturalisation issue that raises concerns about “Moroccan espionage” in Spain
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