Spanish Official Ordered No Checks for Polisario Leader’s Entry, Document Reveals

In a statement obtained by OKDIARIO, Camilo Villarino Marzo, Gonzalez Laya’s right-hand man and trusted person who was her chief of staff, admits that he telephoned on April 18 the "General Francisco Javier Fernández Sánchez, the second-in-command of the air force" so that he would not subject Ghali and his companions to customs or immigration checks. According to him, "this request was perfectly compatible with both established practice and current legislation." The document has already been transmitted to the Zaragoza investigating court, the same source specifies.

Morocco was therefore right to designate the former Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs as responsible for the entry of the Polisario Front leader into Spain. Her right-hand man and chief of staff acknowledges that he was behind the reception of Brahim Ghali at the San Pedro de Logroño hospital under a false identity, after authorizing the medical plane that was transporting him from Algeria to land at the Zaragoza military base.

But it must be admitted that without the presidential authorization of Pedro Sanchez, Laya would not have been able to instruct her chief of staff, who in turn would not have been able to give instructions to the air force headquarters, points out the same source, who concludes that the arrival of Brahim Ghali was meticulously prepared. The proof is that he landed on a military base and not at an ordinary airport, the same source notes.

The Polisario Front leader appeared by videoconference on June 1 before Judge Santiago Pedraz, who was seized of two complaints against him for rape, murder, torture, kidnapping and various human rights violations. After the hearing where no charges were brought against him, he returned to Algeria in the early hours of June 2.