By Emma Pinedo, Jesús Aguado and Victoria Waldersee
MADRID, Sept 9 (Reuters) – Spanish intelligence services warned their Moroccan counterparts and Madrid of plans to storm Ceuta a day before more than 70,000 migrants crossed into Spain’s North African enclave, according to documents released by the government on Wednesday.
In a July 29 note from Spain’s spy agency, the National Intelligence Centre (CNI), to the Moroccan intelligence agencies DGST and DGED, it warned of plans on social media platforms for migrants to enter Ceuta by scaling the border fence or swimming round it, taking advantage of Morocco’s national Throne Day celebrations.
On the same day, the CNI also warned the Spanish government’s representative in Ceuta of the plans, according to declassified WhatsApp messages.
“There are two different groups with a total of 180,000 followers. Just to give you an idea of the scale,” the CNI wrote in reference to the size of the social media groups.
The Moroccan government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Six weeks after the surge in which NGOs estimate 140 people died, more than 10,000 migrants, including unaccompanied minors, remain in Ceuta, living in makeshift camps or on the enclave’s streets and beaches, according to local authorities, fuelling near-daily protests by residents angry at the Spanish government’s handling of the crisis.
The release of the documents is likely to intensify scrutiny of the operational decisions taken in the hours before the crossing and whether sufficient measures were put in place to prevent it.
NO WARNING OF THE SCALE
But Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said the documents showed there had been no warning of the scale of the July 30 migrant surge.
“I am speaking as Spain’s foreign minister, within my remit and based on what I experienced that day. I was not aware of any information of any kind pointing to the magnitude of the avalanche,” Albares told reporters on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez last week said Spain found no evidence to conclude that July’s deadly border rush from Morocco into its enclave of Ceuta was orchestrated by Moroccan authorities, contradicting allegations by Spanish police in a report.
But Spain’s Interior Ministry reported passivity among the Moroccan border police on the day of the crossing, which it said had been due to reinforce the border with 1,000 extra police and soldiers despite it being a public holiday in Morocco, according to a July 30 report.
The Spanish government on Wednesday published 40 intelligence reports, alerts and communications related to the Ceuta migration crisis from July 1-31 after Sánchez had pledged to make them public.
They show that the situation had been brewing in the week leading up to the mass crossing.
“Since July 25, a migration crisis is developing in Ceuta with the arrival of around 1,700 migrants by sea from Morocco to the autonomous city… the available information indicates that more intrusions are to be expected in the very short-term,” Spain’s defence ministry said in an internal presentation published on July 30, describing the situation on the Moroccan coast near Ceuta as a “migratory chaos.”
(Reporting by Emma Pinedo, Jesus Aguado, Victoria Waldersee; additional reporting by Ahmed El Jechtimi; Writing by Charlie Devereux; Editing by Alistair Bell)
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