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Denver – A former Chief of Staff to Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has declared that Arancha Gonzalez Laya, the former Spanish Foreign Minister, knew who Ghali was when he illegally entered Spain earlier this year.
Testifying before a Spanish judge on Monday, Camilo Villarino said Laya called him to inform him that “it has been decided to admit Ghali into Spain.” Ghali, who was under investigation for war crimes committed in Western Sahara, then utilized false identification papers to be admitted to a hospital in the northern Spanish city of Logrono.
The new details shed new light on the controversy that rocked Morocco-Spain relations for weeks, leading to the severance of communication between Madrid and Rabat.
In his testimony, Villarino indicated he was assigned the role of preparing for Ghali’s arrival in Spain, ensuring no “customs or immigration officers” would impede his entry into the country.
A chain of Whatsapp message communication between Villarino and the general chief of the air staff, Francisco Sanchez, implicitly shows the two officials planning for Ghali’s arrival.
Villarino later went to order immigration officials not to prevent Ghali from entering Spain; he also relayed orders to prepare an ambulance and medical equipment for the Polisario leader’s arrival.
Ghali secretly arrived in Spain to seek medical treatment, including for COVID-19, only for Moroccan intelligence to unveil his presence at a Spanish hospital and assess that Algeria and that Spain had colluded to arrange for the trip of the Polisario chief.
While Villarino remained ambiguous with Sanchez as to the identity of the incoming passenger, he did relay that the individual held “a diplomatic Algerian passport and his son holds some type of residence permit in Spain.”
The revelation of Spain’s sheltering of Ghali soured Madrid-Rabat relations for weeks. After weeks of tensions, exacerbated by Spain’s dismissals of Morocco’s demands in the Ghali affair, Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez announced a reshuffling of his government.
Laya did not survive the government reshuffle, with PM Sanchez appointing Jose Manuel Albares, a connoisseur of Morocco, as her replacement.
As a result, many observers have argued that Laya’s mishandling of “Ghaligate,” as some have dubbed the Morocco-Spain dispute around the Polisario leader, was the main reason for her untimely departure from the government.
