Mohammed Belharache: This is the name of one of the characters that landed in the center of Qatargate. A well-known name who was found in France in 2016 as part of a previous judicial inquiry into the service of documents from theFrench counter-terrorism to Morocco by a police officer from Orly Airport. Belharache, an agent of Moroccan intelligence immediately identified as the suspected mastermind behind Rabat’s infiltration into the most secret labyrinths of France’s internal security agency, DGSI, has reemerged at the heart of the euro scandal that has engulfed Brussels.
Who is Mohammed Belharache?
What does Morocco have to do with a renamed investigation? Qatargate? Investigators suspect that not only did Qatar offer “gifts” to further its strategic interests within the European Union and NATO, but so did Morocco. And it is here, as Repubblica pointed out, that Belharache, agent of the Dgedthe Moroccan secret service, quoted in the arrest warrant against the group of people sold in Rabat and Doha to influence the European Parliament.
Belgian prosecutors are convinced that Mr Belharache controlled the group, shoulder to shoulder with a second person: the Moroccan ambassador in Warsaw, Abderrahim Atmoun. But who is Mohammed Belharache really? We know very little about him, except that he managed to avoid the difficulties of a trial in France, which put him on the file of the Crispsi.e. the Paris counter-terrorism factsheets on the most vulnerable issues passed on to Morocco.
On that occasion, the authorities had put a spotlight on a police officer from Paris Orly Airport and a Franco-Moroccan owner of an airport security company. The two would have been corrupted by Belharache. Between trips and payments we are talking about a total of 17,000 euros. Well, the police officer mentioned would have sent the Moroccan services about 200 S-forms on people in transit at Orly airport and made his way to Morocco.
France and “M118”
In the previous French investigation, Belharache was mentioned under a different name, or rather with a code: M118. The point is that while the police officer and the security company owner were convicted, the “spy from Rabat” was never arrested despite his fictional residence in Alsace. The verdict of the French newspaper Le Parisien was flat: “One can certainly not say that the France worked hard to get it.”
Why didn’t Paris pull it off? It seems that the conditional is a must not to risk it irritate Morocco is considered an important partner to counteract this terrorism. In fact, France saw the possibility that Rabat would interrupt or endanger the war as fog and mirrors security cooperation.
And perhaps it is no coincidence that Moroccan Ambassador Abderrahim Atmoun, who was involved in the euro scandal, was awarded the highest distinction of the Legion of Honor by none other than Nicolas Sarkozy. In such a framework, Belharache was able to continue its business. From Paris to Brussels.