Morocco Expands Diplomatic Presence in France: New Consulate in Mantes-la-Jolie Serves Community, Counters Polisario

Inaugurated last Friday, the new consulate in Mantes-la-Jolie has been welcoming Moroccan nationals from the city, the department, the Eure and the Seine-Maritime since Monday, June 23. This opening meets the expectations of a large, active community deeply attached to its country of origin. There would be nearly 20,000 in the Mantois area and 98,000 in the entire Yvelines department. "When you’re in Morocco, people know Paris... and Mantes-la-Jolie," smiles, on condition of anonymity, one of Morocco’s representatives. "The entire Moroccan diaspora, from France or Europe, knows how to locate it on a map!"

Beyond this administrative aspect, the opening of this new consulate has a political dimension. It will allow Morocco to counter the aspirations of the independence movement, the Polisario. At the helm, Moroccan intelligence. "The front is very well established in Mantes. And Moroccan counterintelligence is studying it closely. It has informants everywhere," smiles another representative of the diaspora. "Not long ago," a source confided that "it could count on a lot of people in Mantes to observe" the independence aspirations of the movement, reports Le Parisien, adding that "this omnipresence has even been illustrated to the point of caricature by a video posted on Facebook a few months ago: a former intelligence police officer, clearly at odds with his hierarchy, revealed the names of some correspondents stationed in Mantes-la-Jolie!"