Abdellatif Hammouchi: his name may sound unknown to many, but in reality it is easy to find sporadic news about him in newspaper archives. He is one of the most powerful men in Morocco, a close friend of King Mohamed VI. Its position is at the top of the majzen, the circle of Moroccan power that arises from the royal palace. And because of his work, he is the man who could have prevented the assault on Ceuta, but did not.
Hammouchi is a police commissioner and director of the DGST (Direction Générale de la Surveillance du Territoire), Morocco's internal intelligence service, which is called the same as the counterespionage agency created by General De Gaulle in France (although it is no longer called that). He lives in a palace in Rabat, he is ceremonious, educated and a former high school classmate of King Mohamed. The king's trust in him is so great that, if the monarch travels abroad, he does not leave the country to ensure that nothing happens.
Its importance has a precedent in the times of King Hassan II, who did not trust the military after suffering two failed coups d'état, so he ended up turning a police officer, Driss Basri, into his right-hand man. His son followed in his footsteps and also trusted a police officer.
As head of internal intelligence, it is certain that Hammouchi knew perfectly well the movements of thousands of cars and people towards Castillejos at the end of July. Nothing happens in Morocco without your ears knowing about it. And just in case there were any doubts, the CNI included its agency among the recipients of the notice it sent to Morocco through the early warning channel on July 29, which the Government declassified this week.
The other branch that Hammouchi controls is the Police, of which he is director. This makes him the person who, knowing from the DGST that an assault on Ceuta was expected, could have sent the Police to reinforce the border. Why didn't he do it? The Jabaroot hackers point out that it was not just laziness. Instead, it has currently placed police checkpoints 15 kilometers from Castillejos, so now no one can approach Ceuta, contrary to what happened at the end of July.
Those who know him speak of a very dark side, "not at all human", in which his subordinates have to give him their passport and ask for it if they want to travel abroad, always explaining where they are going. And when something drastic is necessary with someone, that someone may have a fatal accident, "usually with a truck."
His relationship with Spain is ambiguous, love-hate, like the entire neighborhood with Morocco: he has excellent treatment with the National Police, as confirmed by a former senior official of the General Information Commissariat, now retired: «I can only speak well of him. His treatment with us was always exquisite and the collaboration we had, only on the anti-terrorist level, was very good. We exchanged information about jihadists," he recalls.
On the other hand, with the Civil Guard the relationship has been very bad for years. Other members of the State security who have dealt with him remember the famous yacht incident: in 2014, the Civil Guard inspected a pleasure boat in the waters of Ceuta and it turned out to be Mohamed VI himself, who told the agents: "But don't you know who I am?"
That unleashed a storm with Morocco. Five days later, there was the largest avalanche of boats towards Andalusia to date. And also, by the way, a jump over the Ceuta fence, which seemed big at the time, but really it was only about 80 people.
The yacht mishap angered Hammouchi with the Civil Guard, and that has led to Morocco collaborating with them little to nothing on drug trafficking or immigration issues.
However, Hammouchi's role against jihadism is fundamental: the vast majority of the almost 1,100 jihadists detained in Spain so far are Moroccan, and the information shared has been essential for the General Information Commissariat to arrest them over the years.
Furthermore, Morocco has the Gendarmerie as a military-police force, something equivalent to the Civil Guard, so Hammouchi's natural sympathy is greater towards the National Police.
The proof of Morocco's essential role as an ally in this fight is in France. Paris received collaboration similar to that of Spain in anti-terrorist matters, until in 2014 the French Judicial Police tried to arrest Hammouchi to take him before a French judge who was investigating him for torture. That led to the suspension of all collaboration with France.
As a consequence, between 2014 and 2015 the French suffered the worst jihadist attacks in their history: the attacks at the Christmas market in Nantes, the murders at the Jewish supermarket in Paris, the Charlie Hebbdo massacre, the Bataclan theater massacre...
Medals against problems
Last year, the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Civil Guard to Hammouchi, for his collaboration in anti-terrorist and security matters, as seen in the main photo of this information. That it was the great cross of the Benemérita also has something symbolic for trying to fix that historical problem with the Armed Institute. France, curiously, also gave him a decoration a year after trying to arrest him.
