Pegasus Scandal – MarocGate: Moroccan secret services at stake amid secret intelligence war between Morocco and France (Special dossier)

By: Hana Saada

ALGIERS– The latest report from the commission of the European Parliament (EP) ended up sinking the Moroccan secret services.

The DGED, headed by Yacine Mansouri, a childhood friend of King Mohamed VI, is indeed accused in this report of having spied on 14 French ministers, but also of having tapped the telephone of the former President of the Council of Italian ministers Romano Prodi.

Thousands of top-secret Moroccan documents have been revealed by an unknown source, and many of them are now being highlighted in the international press to support corruption charges against current and former members of the European Parliament in the “MarocGate” case.

The leaked documents concern the studies, correspondence, requests for instructions, and above all the names of the DGED’s regular collaborators. Not the usual police snitches, but prominent members of society, Moroccans and foreigners, journalists, politicians, experts, senior officials, members of civil society, etc. Lists of gifts and generous sums of money paid to some politicians, closed this incredible inventory.

“For example, the names of Pier Antonio Panzeri, the former Italian MEP, and his assistant Francesco Giorgi, both currently imprisoned in Brussels for the Qatar Gate and Morocco Gate affair, appeared in these documents without anyone taking notice. Another example was Fight Impunity, the association created by Panzeri in Brussels, and which is now at the centre of the scandal, which was exposed as the brainchild of the late Moroccan ambassador to the European Union, Menouar Alem, in a confidential report sent to the Moroccan foreign ministry in 2012”, the report explained.

Makhzen regime, on its part, did not questioned the authenticity of this immense documentation, and not surprisingly, certain media outlets affiliated to it accused Algeria of being behind this giant leak.

Following in-depth and thorough investigations, the American website “Politics Today” referred, in a report entitled “A Secret Intelligence War between Morocco and France?”, to a secret intelligence war between Morocco and France following the leaking of top-secret documents related to the Makhzen system scandals in Europe, and the so-called Chris Coleman scandals since 2014, acquitting Algeria of Moroccan accusations of being behind the leaking of these top-secret documents.

“Algeria, which is hated by some Moroccans, is not involved at all in this affair, as some have tried to accredit”, said the report.

The leakage is attributed the secret intelligence war between Morocco and France, which has been raging for more than a decade, out of sight and television screens.

“The structure – a state one – behind “Chris Coleman” and which has exposed Moroccan counterespionage and diplomacy is probably the French DGSE (Direction générale de la Sécurité extérieure)”, which exposed Moroccan espionage and diplomacy after weeks of investigation and review, noting that a secret and very unfriendly war has been raging for a decade, and perhaps more, between the French and Moroccan intelligence agencies, “what follows is the result of several weeks of investigation and cross-checking that reveal that an underground and very unfriendly war has been going on for a decade, or perhaps more, between the French DGSE and the Moroccan DGED”, the report pointed out.

It all began in 2014! The very mysterious case saw light when a “hacker” by the name of Chris Coleman published thousands of documents on Twitter and various social networks, many of them classified as “confidential” or “secret,” as well as a huge mass of correspondence, emails, and archives of all kinds exposing in great detail the way the DGED (General Directorate of Studies and Documentation, the Moroccan foreign intelligence agency) and the Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs worked.

For the American website and following the investigation, the great unpacking is connected to an article published by a former junior employee of the Agence France-Presse (AFP) office in Rabat, Mohamed Chakir Alaoui, on May 24, 2014 on the Moroccan website le360. The article entitled “Convocation of the French Ambassador: New Revelations” dropped a piece of information that would set the world on fire. “Agnès Féline,” he wrote, the “second secretary at the French embassy” is the “head of the antenna of the General Directorate of External Security (DGSE) in Morocco.”

This revelation startled the French embassy in Rabat and by extension the Parisian directorate of the DGSE as French diplomats and spies, the American website stressed, wondered how a journalist who was not an expert in the shadowy world of intelligence knew that Féline was indeed the “head of the DGSE antenna in Rabat.”

“The French intelligence center quickly came to the conclusion that the information had been dictated to Alaoui by the Moroccan intelligence service, the only one to know Féline’s true status,” pointed out the website.

But why did the site le360 reveal the true function of a French spy? questioned the American website, before responding: “The Moroccan intelligence services were seeking revenge for a terrible humiliation suffered a few months earlier by the boss of the DST (Directorate General of Territorial Security). In February 2014, the French police sought to arrest the director general of the DST Abdellatif Hammouchi at the residence of the Moroccan ambassador to France in Neuilly-sur-Seine. A judge wanted to hear from the head of Moroccan spies after complaints of torture in Morocco filed by several French citizens, including former world kickboxing champion Zakaria Moumni.  Hammouchi had to leave France in a hurry, without passing through the Parisian airports. This was a great humiliation for the head of the Moroccan secret services,” said the website.

Five months later, in October 2014, the mysterious hacker appeared on Twitter. The tweets were often written in French, but also in other languages. In addition, the efforts to suspend the account that was revealing Moroccan state secrets has little effect.

According to the American website, the decision to “punish” the DGED was taken at the highest level of the French state. The retaliation project was decided by the management of the DGSE, which submitted it to its supervisory minister at the time, the head of the defence portfolio, Jean-Yves Le Drian, who communicated it to Prime Minister Manuel Valls before the latter obtained the final green light from then President of the Republic François Hollande.

These new revelations explain the reasons why the Makhzen miserably lost its fifteen lawsuits brought in France about the Pegasus scandal. This also explains why and how an international arrest warrant was issued by Belgian justice against Yacine Mansouri.

This diplomatic slap, never seen for a good quarter of a century, shows to what extent the old European democracy is not ready to digest the scandal of corruption by Morocco.

That’s not all. Hit hard, the Makhzen is also at the heart of the “Team-Jorges” scandal, at the origin of the dismissal of Rachid M’Barki by BFMTV. This succession of events inevitably benefits the cause of the Saharawi people, who have been fighting for 47 years to free themselves from the yoke of Moroccan occupation.

We expect a positive decision later this year from the European Court of Justice, which should confirm the illegality of Morocco’s trade agreements concluded with the EU and extended to the occupied Saharawi territories, but also reiterate the fact that the Polisario front is the sole representative of the Saharawi people. The final victory is fast approaching!

Here is the link to the article of the American website : https://politicstoday.org/a-secret-intelligence-war-between-morocco-and-france/