Sep 14, 8:01 PM
Madrid’s Lost Opportunity: How Spain Misplaced a Moroccan Spy’s Pegasus Offer
An exiled operative claimed to know how Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was spied on, but his proposal vanished into Spanish bureaucracy.
When an exiled intelligence operative offers to reveal how a foreign power spied on your prime minister, standard administrative protocol would usually dictate taking a phone call. In Madrid, however, state institutions operate under a distinctly different cadence.
Former Moroccan spy Mehdi Hijaouy found himself in precisely this position in the summer of 2024. Having fled to France after a rift with his colleagues in Rabat, Hijaouy subsequently moved to Spain, citing mounting concerns over his safety and that of his family. Seeking protection from potential extradition back to Morocco, he attempted to strike a bargain with Spanish authorities. His currency was potent: insider knowledge on Moroccan intelligence operations, organized crime networks, counter-terrorism, and most notably, the high-profile espionage campaign involving Pegasus spyware against Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
To navigate Madrid’s legal corridors, Hijaouy enlisted a lawyer previously involved in the defense of Hugo Carvajal. Carvajal, Venezuela’s former military intelligence chief, had been arrested in Spain in 2021 and famously attempted to stall his own extradition to the United States on narco-terrorism charges by offering information to Spanish officials. Applying a similar playbook, Hijaouy’s intermediary formally dispatched an email to the public prosecutor’s office at the Audiencia Nacional on October 7, 2024.
The response from the prosecutor’s office, headed by Jesús Alonso, arrived three weeks later, on October 28. An assistant dryly noted that because the Pegasus espionage case was already under judicial review, the intelligence offer ought to be redirected to the presiding magistrate, Judge José Luis Calama.
What followed was a classic exercise in institutional failure. Judicial sources later disclosed that the dossier never actually reached Judge Calama's desk. The state managed to lose track of a whistleblower offering answers regarding the security compromise of its own head of government.
Realizing that Spanish authorities were either unable or unwilling to process his proposal, Hijaouy abandoned his attempt at institutional cooperation. After weighing alternatives such as Canada and Algeria, the former operative executed a discrete exit from Spanish territory via ship and private jet. Having made his way to Turkey, he has since disappeared to an undisclosed location, taking his insider accounts of the Pegasus scandal with him.
Written by Sandy van Dongen sandy.vandongen@alpineweekly.com
