Rabat is hunting down a senior Moroccan intelligence official, both actor and witness to the regime’s dirty tricks, now a fugitive abroad.
The net is tightening around Mehdi Hijaouy. Since 2024, this 53-year-old spy has deserted the Cherifian kingdom, taking with him disturbing secrets about the Makhzen – the power networks surrounding the royal palace – and dragging his family circle and professional networks in his wake. For Mehdi Hijaouy held important positions within Morocco’s formidable security apparatus.
Between March 2025 and February 2026, 42 people have been questioned, prosecuted and convicted of « fraud » and « complicity in assisting a fugitive criminal. » His ex-wife received a three-year prison sentence in 2025. She is due to be retried on appeal in June. Among those targeted are also the brother of the chief of security for the crown prince, Moulay Hassan, and several police commissioners. Mehdi Hijaouy himself lives in hiding. Let’s rewind.
Damning Dossier
Summer 2024. With the Franco-Moroccan reconciliation, Paris is no longer a party for Mehdi Hijaouy. The renegade king’s spy knows his days in the French capital are numbered. Emmanuel Macron has just recognized the Moroccanity of Western Sahara, the former Spanish colony at the heart of a forty-year diplomatic-territorial dispute between Algiers and Rabat. This alignment with Mohammed VI’s position constitutes the epilogue of a deep Franco-Moroccan crisis, triggered three years earlier by the discovery of the French president’s phone number on the target list of the Israeli Pegasus software, made freely available to the Moroccan police by the United Arab Emirates.
For Mehdi Hijaouy, a former senior executive of the Moroccan General Directorate for Studies and Documentation (DGED), Morocco’s external intelligence service, this diplomatic thaw is not good news. In the streets of the French capital, surveillance has tightened around him and his family. Several of his former colleagues are on his tail. On September 10, his wife, Sarra, filed a formal report at a police station in the 8th arrondissement to report the surveillance, a documented complaint that Libération was able to consult. She attached to her statement photos of her Moroccan trackers taken in the act – sipping lemon juice in a café, wandering through the aisles of a perfume shop, or walking on a sidewalk with phone pressed to ear. The matter is sensitive. The spy, who was staying at the time at the Hôtel Saint-Augustin in the Cercle national des armées, is what is called a « big fish. » He held key positions at the DGED, then reportedly worked for Fouad Ali El Himma, Mohammed VI’s advisor and the palace’s political and security mastermind, to the point that he is nicknamed the « viceroy. »
In Rabat, Moroccan authorities have compiled a damning dossier and initiated legal proceedings against Mehdi Hijaouy and his relatives: he is accused in turn of « fraud, » « assistance with illegal immigration, » and « membership in a criminal organization. » An international arrest warrant was transmitted to Interpol in September 2024 for dissemination.
The voluntary exile leaves Paris for Madrid, from where the Moroccan authorities soon request his arrest with a view to extradition. A Spanish judge confiscates his passport and forces him to report to a police station pending a hearing that will decide his fate. During a meeting with the CNI, the Spanish national intelligence service, Hijaouy understands that he will be handed over to Rabat. The fifty-something takes flight, heading for an unknown destination, taking with him his secrets about the intrigues and dirty tricks hatched in the back kitchens of the Moroccan royal power – which makes him dangerous for a large part of the security apparatus.
Blood and Sweat
A zealous servant of the monarchy, Mehdi Hijaouy stepped out of line five years ago when he decided to take a public stance in favor of the Azaitar brothers, Moroccan-German MMA fighters close to the king. The omnipresence of Abu and Ottman Azaitar in Mohammed VI’s private life was at the time considered toxic, even dangerous, by the monarch’s institutional entourage. It irritated to the point that a virulent press campaign was launched in media close to security circles. Seasoned in orchestrated attacks against opponents, journalists, foreign heads of state, or intellectuals in the regime’s crosshairs, they this time took aim at the king’s protégés.
The manners of these athletes with their murky connections are the polar opposite of the codes prevailing in the salons of Dar el Makhzen. Nicknamed the « Ferrari gangsters, » the cage fighters are in the sights of the king’s advisors. They are criticized for flaunting themselves on social media at the wheel of luxury cars from the royal garage, wearing collector’s watches worth over 100,000 euros each, and showing off their pectorals. The media harangue aims to push Mohammed VI to distance himself from them. It will come to nothing: the monarch likes to surround himself with friends, artists, or athletes, often of African origin, who came from nothing and succeeded in imposing themselves in their field through talent, sweat, or blood. Such is the case with Gims, recently indicted in Paris for « aggravated money laundering, » Olympic multi-medalist judoka Teddy Riner, who like him is fond of beautiful cars, or lesser-known athletes, such as a Jiu-jitsu champion from Ceuta.
And of course, the Azaitar brothers. A master of martial arts, Mehdi Hijaouy shares his passion for contact sports with the court athletes, whom he frequents and appreciates. In December 2021 on the Israeli French-language channel I24’s website, he takes the palace hierarchy by surprise. Not giving the Azaitar brothers an official status would amount to « sawing off the branch one is sitting on, » he also thunders in an op-ed published in the Moroccan magazine Challenge. He is convinced: the Azaitar brothers could help train the kingdom’s security professionals in martial arts. Communicated to the king, the proposal is buried by his advisors.
Two years later, Mehdi Hijaouy again bypasses the royal entourage by transmitting a White Paper directly to the monarch. He intends « to offer His Majesty a collection of security intelligence contributions and a reflection on what the intelligence of tomorrow should be. » The document, which Libération consulted, brings together a series of articles written by the author, fleshed out with proposals and recommendations. It is unknown whether Mohammed VI read this initiative report. In any case, this repeat offense is perceived as an affront, even a threat, within a court where the power of courtiers is measured by access to the sovereign. Having become radioactive, Mehdi Hijaouy goes underground. Rumors, fueled by the court’s opacity, swell. Is his approach part of a clan war in this period of end of reign, where the king no longer conceals his failing health? Is he playing an ambitious personal card in anticipation of the post-Mohammed VI era? Or is he the swindler described by certain Moroccan media?
Well Schooled
Mehdi Hijaouy was born in Germany fifty-three years ago, to a Saint-Cyr-trained father who was an embassy defense attaché and appreciated by the late King Hassan II. He is also the nephew of a Moroccan colonel killed during the Yom Kippur War on the Golan front, alongside Arab armies. Young Mehdi, who gravitates in the court’s orbit, joins the DGED in 1994. He learns the secret agent trade on the job and gradually climbs the ranks to become « general controller. » The spy has undergone training in foreign services and secured in 2000 an internship at the Israeli Mossad and Shin Bet, with whom the DGED actively collaborates, assures a close observer of his career: « There, you learn to eliminate a terrorist quickly and cleanly. He was the first Moroccan trainee of the Israelis and offered a collector’s pipe as a thank-you gift to Meïr Dagan, the Mossad chief. »
In 2005, Amos – his code name – heads the action service and the internal security bureau of the DGED. He is part of the king’s official trips to Africa and conducts missions in France, Spain, and the Benelux. On the European stage, his agency disregards, when it deems necessary, the codes of good conduct between friendly countries. Elevated to the rank of « existential » cause, the defense of Western Sahara’s Moroccanity is the priority mission of Moroccan agents. It involves a « shadow war » with Algerian rivals and their Sahrawi affiliates from the Polisario Front. Wherever they can, agents corrupt figures likely to support the kingdom’s policy, and infiltrate Islamist circles.
After building his career at the DGED, Mehdi Hijaouy was from 2017 assigned to the royal advisor in charge of coordinating Moroccan security services. He boasts of this in his White Paper addressed to the king, explaining that he performs « 24/7, strategic security monitoring, translated by the drafting of notes of strategic and forward-looking scope. »
In his new functions, he would have continued to have access to confidential information, on files such as Pegasus. The spyware reportedly enabled the alleged espionage not only of the French president’s and Spanish prime minister’s phones but also of thousands of people. Accusations that Morocco denies, while the judicial investigation opened by the Paris prosecutor’s office four years ago advances in small steps.
Businessmen with a Reputation as Spooks
Faced with the nuisance risk represented by the fugitive, Rabat seeks by all means to minimize his strategic importance in the national intelligence hierarchy. According to Moroccan media, he is merely a subordinate and incompetent agent expelled from the DGED in 2013 and holding no position since. He is portrayed as a poorly sharpened second-rate knife, corrupted by the lure of profit. Assertions contested by Claude Moniquet, director of the European Center for Intelligence and Security. « I can confirm that Mehdi Hijaouy was indeed the number 2 of the DGED. He ran the office of Yassine Mansouri [who headed the DGED] when I was working on the Polisario Front, » states this Brussels-based consultant. « Meetings were held at the DGED headquarters in Rabat. I also met Fouad Ali El Himma through him, » the famous « viceroy, » specifies the expert whose proximity to Moroccan power has never been faulted. In a controversial report published in 2010, he had indeed relayed the Moroccan thesis that the Polisario Front was « in the grip of radical Islamism. »
Did Mehdi Hijaouy’s activism spill over into illegal business practices? Moroccan media insist on business relationships with entrepreneurs with a reputation as spooks. For Me William Bourdon, who defends Hijaouy, the case is purely political. The French lawyer has asked Interpol’s File Control Commission to erase his client’s personal data and Red Notice. « His positions against corruption within the security apparatus, his call for intelligence reform, and his denunciation of the abusive use of technological surveillance have earned him the hostility of the highest state officials, particularly that of Abdelatif El Hammouchi, the police director, and Fouad Ali El Himma, the king’s advisor, whom he publicly implicated, » states the lawyer in the letter addressed to Interpol, which Libération was able to consult. As the price, well orchestrated, of his proximity to Mohammed VI.
Source: Libération
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