BERLIN: A Moroccan man was found guilty on Monday of spying on supporters of a protest group in Germany for a Moroccan secret service.<\/p>\n
The suspect, named only as Youssef El A., was handed an 18-month suspended sentence, the higher regional court in Duesseldorf said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Youssef El A. \u201chad been working for the Moroccan secret service DGED since at least January 2022,\u201d the court said.<\/p>\n
Along with an accomplice identified as Mohamed A., he spied on members of the Hirak movement, a Moroccan opposition protest group, according to the statement.<\/p>\n
Youssef El A. had previously been a supporter of the movement, the court said.<\/p>\n
Mohamed A. was found guilty of spying on supporters of the Hirak movement in August 2023 and was given a suspended sentence of one year and nine months.<\/p>\n
Youssef El A. made a full confession during the trial, the court said.<\/p>\n
After his arrest in Germany in January, Moroccan authorities denied that they had any connection with him.<\/p>\n
A Moroccan security source speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP he was a \u201cradical activist\u201d with a \u201chostile stance against the kingdom.\u201d<\/p>\n
The man \u201chas no ties to Moroccan intelligence services and has never collected information for them,\u201d the source said.<\/p>\n
The Hirak movement emerged in northern Morocco\u2019s Rif region in 2016 following anger over the death of a fishmonger crushed by a bin lorry as he tried to recover swordfish seized by police.<\/p>\n
It sparked protests demanding development in the long-marginalized Berber region, which led to dozens of arrests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BERLIN: A Moroccan man was found guilty on Monday of spying on supporters of a protest group in Germany for a Moroccan secret service. The suspect, named only as Youssef El A., was handed an 18-month suspended sentence, the higher regional court in Duesseldorf said in a statement. Youssef El A. \u201chad been working for …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":86254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86235"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86256,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86235\/revisions\/86256"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}