Ailing rebel reignites feud
The mysterious COVID-19 patient arrived at an airport in northern Spain in a private jet. An ambulance ferried the 71-year-old man on a freeway that passed vineyards of Rioja grapes to a state-of-the-art public hospital in the city of Logrono.
The patient was sent directly to an intensive care bed, registered on April 18 with the identity on his Algerian diplomatic passport: Mohamed Benbatouche.
He turned out to be Brahim Ghali, the leader of the Polisario Front, an Algeria-backed pro-independence movement representing the local Sahrawi people of Africa’s Western Sahara. Ghali’s presence in Spain under a disguised identity didn’t go unnoticed by the government in Morocco, the country that annexed Western Sahara nearly half a century ago.
The Moroccan government, which regards Ghali as a terrorist, protested Spain’s decision to grant compassionate assistance to its top enemy. It threatened there would be “consequences.” And they finally came to fruition last week when Morocco let down its guard on the border with Ceuta, a Spanish city perched on the northern African coastline.
The move allowed thousands of migrants to enter Ceuta, many of them children who swam or jumped over fences.
The humanitarian crisis has become a flashpoint between the neighbours. Morocco recalled its ambassador in Madrid. Spain is under fire from human rights groups for pushing back most of the trespassers in bulk, which is illegal under international law.
And in what resembled an assertion of its sovereignty of Ceuta, which many Moroccan nationalists deem a colony of Madrid along with the nearby Spanish city of Melila, Spain deployed soldiers to the border. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez also made a quick trip to the overwhelmed city.
Since Morocco annexed Western Sahara in 1975, filling a void left when Spain withdrew as a colonial power, the international community has been divided on its recognition, with most countries backing a long-running U.N. effort for a negotiated solution.
Pushing instead for a referendum on self-determination has been the main focus for Ghali, who was elected president of the self-declared Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic in 2016.
At the San Pedro hospital, there is little sign of Polisario’s top man. People familiar with his condition say herecently finished three weeks in critical care.
“They probably chose this place because nothing ever happens here, and we rarely make it to the news,” resident Milagros Capellan, 64, said as she left the hospital after a checkup. “It feels strange that this is connected with the very sad developments in Ceuta.”