Spain Denies Citizenship to Alleged Moroccan Intelligence Agent Monitoring Polisario Front

In a ruling dated May 31, the administrative chamber of the Audiencia Nacional refused to grant nationality to the Moroccan because of his "collaboration with the Moroccan intelligence services since 2010 to whom he reported on the activities of the Polisario Front and the Sahrawi community in Spain," according to the report of the National Intelligence Center (CNI). The judge considers that in doing so, the Moroccan has not "justified good civic conduct", in accordance with the provisions of Article 22.4 of the Civil Code, reports Sur.

However, the Moroccan has been legally residing in Spain for 22 years with his wife and two children who already have Spanish nationality. He has never been arrested by the police or received an "administrative sanction". But the Audiencia Nacional considers the CNI report, which claims he is a Moroccan spy, sufficient to deny him nationality.

Sources from the State Security suspect Morocco to be behind the espionage using Pegasus of the phones of Pedro Sanchez and the Ministers of the Interior and Defense, Fernando Grande-Marlaska and Margarita Robles, in 2021. They also note an increasingly strong interest of the Moroccan intelligence services in the Sahrawi community in Spain and the activities of the Polisario Front, since March 2022 when Pedro Sanchez expressed Spain’s support for the Moroccan autonomy plan for the Sahara.

The Audiencia Nacional has already rejected the nationality of several Moroccans on grounds of "espionage". This was the case in September, where the applicant would be a spy who worked in the Moroccan consulates in Seville and Madrid since 2016; in 2020, where another would have been based at the Moroccan consulate in Las Palmas between 2008 and 2016; or again in 2013 where the spy would have worked at the Moroccan consulate in Almeria.