Spanish Court Denies Citizenship to Moroccan Consulate Worker Suspected of Espionage

The judges base their decision on a report from the Spanish secret services accusing this Moroccan consular official in Madrid of maintaining "close ties with his country of origin" and being a "local agent" of its "intelligence services". They also argue that he is linked "to the current head of Moroccan intelligence services in Spain". The Moroccan agent has rejected these accusations, El Pais reported.

In this decision dated September 14, the National Court specifies that the Moroccan agent began the procedures for obtaining Spanish nationality in October 2010, stating that he did his university studies in the country between 1989 and 1994 and returned there in 2006 to work as an interpreter at the Moroccan consulate in Seville before being posted to Madrid in 2015. Married to a Spanish citizen of Moroccan origin and the father of two Spanish children, he has "good civic conduct", no criminal record, is well "integrated into Spanish culture and way of life" and speaks "fluent" Spanish, according to reports from the civil registry, the public prosecutor’s office and the security forces.

Despite all these favorable conditions, Spanish nationality was denied to him for "reasons of public order or national interest" based on the CNI report. Until 2013, CNI reports against the naturalization of a foreigner were limited to stating that the applicant posed a threat to "national security". But between 2011 and 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in four of its judgments that these reports needed to be substantiated in order not to leave the foreign citizen defenseless.

The CNI report on which the National Court bases its decision is dated April 2019. The document indicates that there is evidence linking the Moroccan employee to the intelligence services of his country for at least 10 years. The Moroccan had denied in the first instance "any collaboration with the Moroccan intelligence services" and criticized the "laconic" nature of the CNI report, arguing that it did not detail the alleged espionage activities. But for the court, the CNI report is "sufficiently clear". Over the past 10 years, four other Moroccan citizens applying for Spanish nationality have had their application rejected on the basis of similar CNI reports.