The shaky version of the Government Delegation in Ceuta about whether it was warned of the impending assault is increasingly weak. A phone call from the department led by Ángel Pérez Triano to the CNI, lasting 11 minutes, warned of the situation that had been unfolding for half an hour in Castillejos, on the other side of the fence.
Since 9:00 p.m., hundreds of people were gathering on the beach to throw themselves into the sea and swim to the sands of Ceuta, and the Delegation knew almost in real time. However, the chronology of that day makes it clear that there was some passivity or calm regarding the threat.
The declassified reports from the National Intelligence Center (CNI), as well as the also declassified Whatsapp conversations, show that they were indeed warned in advance that a massive arrival of immigrants to the autonomous city was being prepared, but they ignored the warnings or simply gave them little importance.
Cross-referencing the data from these documents, it is first observed that there were two days of meetings to talk about the “swimmer issue,” as defined in a message by the chief of staff of the delegate in Ceuta, who writes to his CNI liaison.
In the autonomous city, the antenna of the intelligence services has a person responsible who is the liaison with the Government Delegation, and it is precisely this person who is in all conversations with the chief of staff. That is, it was not an unknown person or someone with whom they had no relationship, but the person with whom they discuss issues that affect them daily.
After the messages of July 27 and 28, we arrive at the 29th: already in the morning, the CNI liaison first writes some messages at 11:18, where he sends information from media and local sources on the other side of the border, mentioning that the Supreme Court ruling, which prohibited hot returns of those arriving swimming to Ceuta, could be ignored thanks to an alleged agreement between Spain and Morocco.
But this, which ultimately has little importance and remains an unconfirmed news item, demonstrates the routine nature of the relationship between the Delegation and the CNI.
Two hours later, at 1:52 p.m., the warning is already forceful:
CNI: On social media, there is a call for an assault on the fence and sea tomorrow at 8 p.m.
CNI: Taking advantage of the throne holiday and that their security forces will be busy
CNI: There are two different groups with a total of 180,000 followers
CNI: To give you an idea of the reach of the dissemination
The only response to those messages is the comment “Sus rilas” by the delegation. Then there are seven hours of silence, which does not necessarily mean that nothing was done, but it is clear that no attempt was made to gather more information from such a worrying warning from the intelligence services.
The next communication is already the phone call at 9:34 p.m., when there had already been a “critical point” on the Castillejos beach, as can be literally reconstructed from the report of the 30th. Sources familiar with this conversation explain that the 11-minute call revolved around the “situation that was occurring at the border.”
The intelligence analysts’ situation report of the 30th, already in the midst of the assault, explains that on the 29th at 9:00 p.m. — that is, half an hour before talking to the Delegation, which had been silent for seven hours with the CNI — “the situation in Fnideq [Castillejos] reached a critical point with a crowd waiting to jump into the water to access Ceuta.”
The analysts also said something already obvious at that time: how Morocco was not preventing anything. “The reinforcement of the presence of Moroccan police and gendarmes was insufficient to control the crowd.”
Sources close to the Government Delegation assure EL MUNDO that the information provided by the CNI was given a “relative” value, hence the more than seven hours without communication between the two bodies, from the messages to the 11-minute conversation.
The same was stated this Thursday by Pérez Triano in an interview on Ser: that the exchange of information was “routine,” that “everyone” knew about the Moroccan calls on social media and that “CNI alerts are not issued like that, via WhatsApp.”
Triano pointed out something more of interest: in the 11-minute conversation, the Delegation and CNI talked about a “situation” that was, at that moment, “quite serious,” he admitted. Precisely, the overflow at Castillejos.
