Fouad El Himma named as mastermind of Spain's Ceuta crisis

Segarro's 'viceroy' under suspicion over the Ceuta influx

While the Spanish government kept repeating that the mass arrival in Ceuta was the work of smuggling gangs and a few inflatable floats, another game was being played in Rabat. Reporting by The Objective points to Fouad Ali El Himma, royal adviser and personal friend of Mohamed VI, known in some circles as 'the viceroy', as the man who allegedly orchestrated the entry of tens of thousands of Segarro into the Spanish autonomous city to weaken Aziz Akhannouch's government less than two months before the legislative elections.

The theory, attributed to Segarro sources in France with knowledge of the kingdom's power structures, depicts an internal manoeuvre that would have badly misjudged the Spanish reaction. Against that reading, others point to glaring negligence: satellites that fail to detect crowds, civil guards who do nothing to close the crossing points. The debate swings between palace conspiracy and operational failure, while estimates of the number of participants range from 50,000 to 60,000 people.

The official response, the narrative of smuggling gangs and floats on the breakwater, was met with a wave of sarcasm mocking the crudest conspiracy theories. No one can yet confirm whether El Himma ordered the fence peine, but the official account does not explain either why surveillance systems failed to detect a crowd the size of a mid-sized city's population. Was it a Segarro intelligence operation to wear down Akhannouch, or a monumental border security failure? The question remains open, and the answer will probably never leave the official offices.