By transiting through the Spanish enclaves, Sebta and Melilla, the new Algerian cocaine cartels are competing with the main supplier of the Moroccan market, the so-called "la Scie", and are causing a stir among Moroccan security services who are unaware of their modus operandi.
Significant sums of foreign currency, estimated at more than 25 million dirhams, were seized at the Bab Sebta crossing point on Wednesday, December 18, 2019.
While Spain has definitively removed its barbed wire on the 8.2-kilometer border perimeter around Ceuta, Morocco is putting new ones in place.
The Northern Observatory for Human Rights (ONDH) denounced the decision of the Moroccan government to soon restore the situation of the Bab Sebta border crossing.
After more than two months of closure, the border crossing in Sebta will be reopened in the coming days. This is at least what Hassan Abyaba, government spokesman, claims.
The Tarajal II (Sebta) border post has already been closed for three months on the decision of the Spanish and Moroccan authorities. The scale of the smuggling traffic and the disorder it creates at the border posts on both sides do not seem to argue in favor of a reopening.
According to unofficial estimates, the turnover generated by smuggling between Morocco and the two cities of Ceuta and Melilla would amount to several billion dirhams per year.
The border crossings of Ceuta and Melilla would have been permanently closed by the Moroccan authorities, according to information relayed by Spanish media.
A Moroccan imam was banned from preaching this Friday, November 22, following an alleged agreement between the Spanish and Algerian authorities on the management of the mosques of Ceuta and Melilla.
For a few days on social networks, the controversy is intensifying about a video filmed at the Bab Sebta border post. The 60-second sequence shows on the one hand a young girl and a person in a wheelchair, and on the other hand, Moroccan customs officers. Apparently, a disagreement between these two camps has gone wrong.
The driver of the van that rammed straight into the Tarajal border post in Ceuta , on Monday, November 18, 2019, is Moroccan. He is likely to get into serious trouble with the Spanish justice system.
The elements of the national security at the Bab [Sebta] center proceeded, on Sunday, November 17, to the arrest of a French national of Algerian origin. The French justice had issued an international arrest warrant against him for his involvement in international drug trafficking cases.