The National Police has informed Judge María Tardón, who is investigating the crossing of about 80,000 people from Morocco to Spain through the Ceuta border on July 30 and 31, that the action was planned and executed by agents of the Moroccan security forces, in stark contrast to what the Spanish Government has maintained: President Pedro Sánchez, although initially stating that it was an “attack on Spanish territorial integrity” – something that by definition can only be carried out by another country -, has maintained that Morocco neither conceived nor executed the action, blaming “mafias” involved in human trafficking and countries like Russia and Israel.
The National Police, on the other hand, holds the opposite view. Specifically, the report sent this Monday to Judge Tardón, who was on duty at the National Court during the events, was prepared by the intelligence unit of the General Immigration Police Station, known as CENIF (National Immigration and Borders Center), and its conclusions are devastating for Moncloa.
According to CENIF, the body responsible for analyzing such situations, the assault was a carefully planned process aimed at overwhelming the Spanish border control system, and eliminating Spain’s capacity to respond. Spanish agents even assure the judge that their Moroccan counterparts were able to monitor the execution of the action on the ground: EL MUNDO had already reported from the outset that Moroccan agents were detected among the alleged migrants who crossed the border.
Furthermore, the Police directly link what they do not hesitate to label as a operation with the territorial claim of the Alaouite regime over the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla. The report, whose content was previewed by El Español and confirmed by EL MUNDO, is already in the hands of the Prosecutor’s Office.
According to police sources accessed by this newspaper, its content could cause friction between the Directorate General of Police and the General Immigration Police Station: Judge Tardón reportedly requested the report directly from the latter, which sent it without first circulating it through the leadership represented by Francisco Pardo.
CENIF also states in the report that the alleged migratory purpose of the incident was merely a formal cover for the operation, commanded on the ground by Moroccan agents, some in uniform and others in plain clothes, and notes that there are numerous images proving this during the very mass arrival.
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Additionally, CENIF cites as evidence that the incident was not migratory but an attack on sovereignty the very fact that most of those who crossed the border illegally returned to Morocco within a few hours. The body also says that it issued a risk alert for entry on July 29 itself, hours before the events, indicating that the large wave was being prepared “for July 30” and “by sea”.
The report unequivocally states that uniformed Moroccan gendarmes instructed migrants on how to access the border from Castillejos, the border town on the Moroccan side (Fnideq in Darija Arabic), and commanded the flow of those more than 80,000 people to the fence that separates one country from the other.
Already in El Tarajal, on the Moroccan side, other agents of the Alaouite country, this time in plain clothes, even gave instructions to the gendarmes on how to operate to facilitate the arrival of the torrent of people to the breakwater that separates both countries. There is even, the report notes, graphic evidence of this action by plainclothes Moroccan agents. Thus, the Police rule out the possibility that “mafias” managed to shepherd the migrants, both Maghrebis and Sub-Saharans, into Spanish territory.
Moreover, CENIF considers the incident in the report as a canonical counterintelligence operation, as it discredits the intelligence apparatus of the country being targeted by sowing doubt about its capabilities: it points here to the Spanish National Intelligence Center as one of the clearest targets of the action.
Finally, it bases its certainty of the planning of the strike on the different human waves that made it up, to reach the greatest number of migrants by overwhelming Ceuta: first, young men equipped to make the swim, overpowering and blinding the Spanish response capacity, and later families without means, more vulnerable, to finish off.
