Polisario Leader’s Secret Spain Visits Revealed, Morocco Aware

Before April, the leader of the Polisario Front had traveled twice to the Canary Islands and the other times to Spain, reports Vozpópuli, which specifies that on all these occasions, the Moroccan authorities, who were informed in advance by their Spanish counterparts, of Brahim Ghali’s presence on Spanish territory, demanded "extreme discretion" and that no publicity be made in the media about the movements of the latter.

It is in the same concern to avoid any publicity about his presence that Brahim Ghali went to Spain in April in a medicalized aircraft of the Algerian presidency and landed at the Zaragoza military base, according to the Spanish intelligence services. He was then escorted by the Civil Guard in an ambulance to the Logroño hospital, where he was admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU), under the identity of Mohamed Benbatouche.

Except that in April, the Moroccan authorities were not informed of the presence of the Polisario leader on Spanish soil, provoking the anger of the kingdom. Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzales Laya has argued that Brahim Ghali arrived in Spain for "humanitarian reasons". On Sunday, she declared on a local radio station that the Polisario leader will leave Spain as soon as he has recovered. This statement further confuses relations with Morocco.