Algerian officials in France victims in Morocco espionage case

A French police officer has been suspected of transmitting information to the Moroccan intelligence services by spying on Moroccan nationals and senior Algerian officials according to an investigation by the Libération newspaper.

The police officer, known as Charles D, obtained documents which he then gave to an intermediary known as Driss A who then passed them onto a Moroccan intelligence officer, Mohammed B.

Driss A, born in Morocco, “kept documents from the PAF [border police] on the border crossing of a former senior Algerian official, as well as two notes from the Algerian embassy about the passages of two ministers in office.”

The police officer in charge was charged on 31 May for corruption and violation of professional secrecy. In exchange for the information provided to the Moroccan services, the man, who is close to retirement, would have benefited from free stays in Morocco.

Read: Algeria one of 20 African countries on UK spy list

The three ministers in office at the time of the incident were Hamid Grine, minister of communication, Tahar Hadjar, minister of higher education and former Deputy Prime Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni, who was also interior minister.

“Two sheets” were reportedly found relating to the movements in Paris of these ex-ministers at the home of Driss A, who was the director of the ICTS security company at Orly airport.

Hadjar was present in Paris on 25 and 26 January 2017 as part of the 4th Algerian-French Conference on Higher Education and Research, and Grine on 25 January at the Institut du Monde Arabe in the framework of a conference on the exhibition “Biskra, spells of an oasis”.

The question that this investigation provokes is how Driss A., acting as an intermediary between the Moroccan agent and the French police officer, found himself in possession of such documents probably written by the Algerian intelligence and coming from the Embassy of Algeria in Paris?

Read more: Algeria ‘will not be satisfied’ until martyrs’ skulls in France are buried in Algeria

Where Charles D. had access to confidential notes written by his department, the documents from the Algerian embassy in Paris that were obtained raises questions whether a “mole” operated in the diplomatic mission.

New ambassador to France

Algeria’s Foreign Minister Abdelkader Messahel announced on Monday that a request had been made for the appointment of Abdelkader Mesdoua as the new ambassador of Algeria in France, the official news agency reported.

“We have submitted a request for the appointment of Abdelkader Mesdoua as Ambassador of Algeria to France,” Messahel said on the sidelines of the opening session of Parliament, recalling that “the priorities of all ambassadors consists in the implementation of the country’s foreign policy and the strategy established by the President of the Republic, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, in the context of the new deployment of Algerian diplomacy in relations with neighbouring countries or internationally.”