Morocco has reduced the number of its current diplomatic representatives in Spain. Two close associates of the ambassador, Karima Benyaich, are reportedly leaving.
Two imminent departures are looming at the Moroccan embassy in Madrid. Ibrahim Khalil Alaoui and Mohamed Amin Tekaia, two “trusted men”, advisors within the diplomatic representation “are preparing to leave the Spanish capital, where they have been on mission since 2018”, reveals the Iberian media Ok Diario.
In addition to this, the Spanish website adds that the number 2 of the embassy, Farid Oulhaj, has reached retirement age.
Apparently, Morocco has decided “to reduce the level of its diplomatic representation in Madrid to an unprecedented level”, a well-informed source tells our confreres of Hespress. “The decision was taken last week,” the source said. At the same time, Morocco announced the return of its ambassador to Berlin, as a clear sign of a warming of relations between Morocco and Germany.
But the return of Karima Benyaich, Morocco’s ambassador to Madrid, remains, for the moment, uncertain. In May 2021, she was summoned by the former Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs Arancha Gonzalez Laya following the migration crisis in Sebta.
The diplomat said in a statement to the Spanish agency Europa Press that Madrid should assume the consequences of its actions in reference to the reception under a false identity of the Polisario leader Brahim Ghali, who was hospitalised for complications related to the coronavirus.
On condition of anonymity, sources in the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs have just described Karima Benyaich’s comments as “non-diplomatic” and “aggressive”, writes Ok Diario.
She is however well known in Spain, comments the media, which points out that several members of her family have held high representative positions. There was her brother, Fadel Benyaich, Moroccan ambassador in Madrid between 2014 and 2018, and then Abdeslam Baraka, her cousin, who held the same position during the Leila Island crisis. An episode that had, let us recall, strongly marked the diplomatic relations between Rabat and Madrid.
The Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, recently expressed his wish to see the Moroccan ambassador back in Madrid. Despite the diplomat’s conspicuous absence from the traditional reception in honour of the diplomatic corps in Spain, King Felipe VI referred in his speech to the “need” for Spain and Morocco to start “walking together” in order to make the new bilateral relationship on which both governments are working a reality.
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