Join on WhatsApp 
Join on Telegram Fez – General intelligence commissioner, Eugenio Pereiro, revealed last week that he was aware of Brahim Ghali‘s impending trip to Spain on April 18.
According to Spanish newspaper Larazon, Pereiro told the judge investigating the Brahim Ghali case, which sparked a severe diplomatic rift between Morocco and Spain, that he was given information about the arrival of the Polisario chief.
He made the statement as a witness before the head of the Court of Instruction number 7 of Zaragoza, Judge Rafael Lasala. Pereiro said he received the information about Ghali’s prospective travel to Spain from an anonymous informant.
Refusing to reveal the identity of the anonymous agent, the commissioner invoked Spain’s law of official secrets of 1986, which protects the professional secrecy of the agents exempting them from revealing the identity of their informants, Larazon reported.
Pereiro stressed, however, that the information was leaked to him from an anonymous collaborator, not an official. He noted that the informant warned him of the “suspicion” of the imminent arrival of the “Polisario Front leader” to Spain.
Former Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya and her chief of staff already knew of the arrival of Ghali in Spain and are subject to investigation in this case.
But Pereiro denied fully knowing it was Ghali who would enter Spain as the information was “vague.” He could only know the identity of the entrant on April 22, 2020, when the news spread in the press and the judge of the National Court, Santiago Pedraz, ordered the Police to check if the Polisario Front leader was really admitted to the San Pedro hospital in Logrono.
Read also: Morocco-Algeria Rift Enters Dangerous Terrain As Algiers Intensifies Disinformation Campaign
He said he relayed this information to his superior, the police deputy operational director (DAO), and ordered a review of the medical vehicle that transported Ghali from Zaragoza to Logrono on April 18.
Pereiro also noted that he did not know the identity of the doctor who accompanied Ghali on his trip to Spain.
Spain’s General Intelligence denied any records of the identity of the person or people who landed with him Ghali at the military base in Zaragoza.
Fernando Martínez Soba, who at that time was in charge of the Intensive Care Unit of the San Pedro hospital, has been reported to have declared that Ghali arrived accompanied by a doctor and his son.
In his hearing, Pereiro suggested that police were unable to identify the two people who accompanied the Polisario chief to Spain because Spain’s foreign ministry exempted them from passport and customs control.
Algeria created a false identity for the separatist leader in order for him to enter Spain and be hospitalized under the name Mohamed Ben Batouch. Arancha Gonzalez Laya had a hand in the whole operation, documents have revealed.
In October, a judge in the Spanish city of Zaragoza accused the Spanish government of violating Schengen regulations after allowing Polisario leader Brahim Ghali to travel to Spain in April.
But Laya has repeatedly defended Spain’s sheltering of Ghali in spite of his association with several first-degree crimes, saying that the decision to welcome him was purely “humanitarian” as the Polisario leader needed urgent medical attention.
