Wikileaks: Ceuta and Melilla are key drug transit points according to Rabat

CEUTA/MELILLA (Agencies) According to US diplomatic cables released recently by Wikileaks, the two Spanish outposts in North Africa are key transit points for cocaine moving from Latin America through Africa and into Europe. The cables also claim that the Spanish enclaves are important gateways for heroin destined for addicts in Morocco. The claims were recorded in correspondence from the US embassy in Rabat, attributed to unnamed officials in the Moroccan government and published earlier this week in El País newspaper. The same report says that the drugs are sent into West African countries from Latin America and then across Mauretania, Mali and Algeria through sparsely populated areas of the Sahara desert, making the most of lax, corrupt or nonexistent border controls to get shipments into Morocco and the Spanish cities.>From there, the drugs are moved on commercial ferries across the Strait of Gibraltar to Algeciras. Cocaine seizures are routine in Algeciras but no one knows how much gets through. However, the US Embassy cables also claim that inspections on the cross-Strait ships were significantly less stringent than at other EU ports. Nevertheless, the communications also said that shipments of hashish from the North African coast had been diverted to Algeria to avoid tightened Spanish security in the Straits of Gibraltar, with Moroccan gangs now using powerful speedboats to transport the drugs deep into the Mediterranean to destinations in Northern Spain, Mallorca, Ibiza and even as far as Marseilles in Southern France.

The first cable, dated in January 2009, to mention the goings on at Nador, a Moroccan port about 14 kilometres from Melilla, had speed boats with up to five powerful outboard engines travelling the Western Mediterranean distributing drugs practically to order. Subsequent cables report on the detention of dozens of people, mainly police officers, gendarmes and Navy officers, all of whom were allegedly working with the well known drug smuggler who owned those boats.

In more recent cables it is reported that the invasion of cocaine in the area is relatively new. Until 2008, the US cables sent from Morocco pointed to Ceuta and Melilla as the preferred point of exit for the traditional production of Moroccan hashish, which has historically been centred on the Rif Mountains and the Mediterranean.

Although the Moroccan authorities have made considerable efforts towards eradicating hashish production with such methods as crop substitution, destruction and fumigation, and reducing the surface from 134,000 hectares in 2003 to 52,000 in 2009, the US still considers that kingdom as one of the world's major producers.

Cold diplomatic language does not mask the problems arising from these anti-production campaigns, which could severely impact on the subsistence of those who grow the cannabis plant: the Moroccan government calculates that they amount to some 100,000 at the end of 2009.

Finally, the Wikileaks cables reveal that the US Embassy at Rabat pointed out to the Moroccan Government that the same maritime and land routes used for drug smuggling, as well as the income derived from the illicit trade, could also be used for terrorist activities, although they also say that there was no "evidence" of this "hypothesis".

In March of 2009, taking advantage of a visit to Rabat from the head of the Criminal Court in Madrid, embassy officials asked him what he thought were the possibilities of terrrorist actions in Ceuta or Melilla. The judge admitted that this could happen "at any moment", although he thought it unlikely given the concentration of security forces in both places, which are often referred to as 'army towns'. The judge's response did nothing to convince his questioners, who concluded that it was "difficult to believe" that Islamic terrorists could not attack if they could mix easily with the copious trans-frontier traffic there.