Madrid authorities seek to jail H&D writer in blatant political prosecution

Madrid prosecutors aim to jail Isabel Peralta, H&D’s European correspondent, for her comments at a demonstration last year.

Isabel Peralta – European correspondent of H&D who recently addressed our meeting in Preston – is in court this week in Madrid, where the authorities aim to jail her for three years.

The case has been brought under Spain’s equivalent of the UK’s racial incitement laws, but as our assistant editor Peter Rushton explains in this article, Isabel is being targeted in blatant political machinations: not only by the Spanish government, but also by lobbyists working in the interests of the Moroccan government.

For this and other reasons which we shall disclose in a later article, the prosecution of Isabel Peralta is a disgrace to Spanish justice. If she is convicted, the matter will be appealed if necessary as far as the European Court. Spanish politicians and Moroccan lobbyists are the true criminals, working against the interests of Spain and against the interests of Europeans.

Isabel Peralta addressing H&D’s event in Preston a few weeks ago

The case dates back to 18th May 2021, when a demonstration was held outside the Moroccan Embassy in Madrid by a Spanish nationalist youth group. Isabel was at the time a leading activist in this group.

In an interview and speech, both of which were later broadcast on YouTube, Isabel explained the purpose of this demonstration: to draw attention to the attempted blackmail being exerted by the Moroccan Government, who were threatening to flood Spain with immigrants unless Spain accepted Moroccan control over Western Sahara.

This is a diplomatic dispute that has been going on for more than half a century, ever since Spain gave up its colonial control over the province once known as Spanish Sahara. Morocco seeks to grab the entire area for itself, but is opposed by an independence movement called Polisario Front, which is backed by Algeria.

It is in Spaniards’ economic interest to back the Polisario, partly in order to remain on good terms with Algeria, which supplies Spain with natural gas. But for the past two years the Moroccan government has exerted blackmail on Spain.

Spain’s shameless Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez being entertained by leading politicians in Morocco in April 2022 after his government’s surrender to Moroccan blackmail.

Morocco’s main weapon is control over illegal immigration into Spanish territory. They have indicated that they are prepared to turn the immigration tap on or off. And Spain’s socialist government is naturally unable or unwilling to take firm action against the consequent flood, just as it fails to resist mass immigration from elsewhere.

Essentially this was the background to the demonstration addressed by Isabel Peralta in Madrid in May last year. The demonstration targeted both the Moroccan government’s blackmail, and the Spanish authorities’ weakness.

Isabel’s interview and speech was making a serious and well-informed case. She explained that the demonstrators had come to the Embassy “to stand up to the indecency of our politicians who look the other way, while we suffer unprecedented racial replacement”.

She emphasised that “the problem here is not Morocco. The problem is what purports to be our own government, which with impunity sets off this explosion: the arrival of immigrants on a massive scale.”

Since politicians were not prepared to stand up to the Moroccan government’s blackmail, Spanish nationalist youth had to come forward. Isabel concluded her interview with words that require some explanation to British readers: “We shall not allow another Green March.”

Moroccan invaders on the ‘Green March’ in November 1975

The Green March – on 6th November 1975 – was the deliberate incursion by 350,000 Moroccans (organised by their government) into what was still Spanish colonial territory, in what is now Western Sahara. Because Spain was beginning its decolonisation, its soldiers were ordered not to open fire and to accept what was essentially an invasion.

So the Green March was a Spanish surrender, abandoning their responsibility to their former colonial subjects. Spain signed the so-called Madrid Accords, which effectively rewarded Morocco for their illegal invasion. (Part of the problem was that this was happening during the last weeks of General Franco’s life: he was dying and incapable of exercising any political authority.)

During her speech to the rally outside the Moroccan Embassy, Isabel picked up the theme that had concluded her interview: “Now as in 1975, they are trying again and they are coming with force, and 5,000 now seems like a lot to us, but in ten years they will seem like few, because if we do not stop them this will be our future: immigration in Europe will supplant our race, our diversity, our religion and our culture, and we are the only ones who are going to fight for it.”

The context is very clear: Isabel is correctly comparing the surrender in 1975, when the Spanish government gave in to Moroccan invaders and betrayed the indigenous people of Western Sahara, to the potential surrender in 2021-2022, when today’s Spanish government is similarly weak in the face of Moroccan threats.

Isabel addressing the Embassy rally in May 2021. Her accurate analysis of Spain’s surrender to Moroccan blackmail has resulted in Isabel herself – not treacherous politicians and lobbyists – facing trial!

It turned out that Isabel was absolutely correct. Not only has the Madrid government continued to allow floods of immigrants, it has also surrendered to Morocco’s blackmail. In March 2022, almost a year after Isabel’s comments, Spain’s socialist government carried out a U-turn and adopted a pro-Moroccan position, abandoning the decades-long Spanish policy that Western Sahara’s future should be settled by a referendum of its inhabitants.

The U-turn threatens vital trade deals including the supply of natural gas from Algeria.

The entire situation is a shambles, rooted in the inability of Spain’s socialist government to stand up for Spanish interests.

As so often across the West, when the arguments of nationalists are vindicated, the authorities’ response is to persecute us. And as so often, weakness in the face of an invader or a blackmailer merely invites further invasion and further blackmail.

This time it is our correspondent Isabel Peralta who is on the frontline. As they prepared their surrender to Morocco, the Spanish authorities launched a prosecution of Isabel, which has come to court in Madrid this week. Prosecutors are asking for her to be jailed for up to three years.

In presenting her interview and speech as inciting racial violence, prosecutors have deliberately ignored its political context. They have not only deliberately distorted her speech, they have even omitted crucial words from the transcript. Isabel clearly said that the demonstration was anti-immigration, but not motivated by hatred of any race. Such hatred, she emphasised, would be absurd since our entire political outlook is based on recognition of racial differences. We are motivated, she pointed out, “by admiration and devotion to our own race in the face of a threat to its very existence”.

The political manipulation at the heart of this case is obvious from official papers that I have examined.

Mohammed Chaib (above, third left) at an official Moroccan event with his good friend Karima Benyaïch, the Moroccan Ambassador to Madrid, plus socialist MP Ricardo Garcia and Spain’s honorary consul in Morocco, Khadija El Gabsi. Chaib has extensive Moroccan business interests – an employee of his foundation brought the only criminal complaint against Isabel’s speech.

Ten days after the demonstration, Madrid’s political police were visited by Sofia Bencrimo, an employee of a charity that promotes the integration of immigrants. Later the same day these police officers sent a report to the prosecutors: this was the first step in the process leading to Isabel’s criminal trial.

The political police (duly followed by prosecutors) presented Ms Bencrimo’s complaint against Isabel as though it reflected a charity standing up for ordinary immigrants who felt threatened by Isabel’s words. In the entire prosecution dossier of more than 90 pages, which I have studied in detail, Ms Bencrimo’s is the only complaint from anyone outside Spanish officialdom.

Yet the organisation this complainant represented – the Ibn Battuta Foundation – is not as simple as police and prosecutors pretend.

Its president is Mohammed Chaib Akhdim, a veteran politician and businessman with close personal and financial ties to the Moroccan government – the very people whose actions were being exposed and criticised in Isabel’s speech.

Chaib is a former MP in both the Catalan and Madrid parliaments for the left-wing party PSC (Socialists Party of Catalonia). But he is also a wealthy businessman with financial interests in his native Morocco, and in particular stands to benefit from Morocco taking control of Western Sahara. Since 1992 he was been director of business development in Morocco for COMSA Industrial, a company with vast interests in engineering and construction projects in Morocco, including the disputed territory of Western Sahara.

Mohammed Chaib (second left) with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. Chaib’s business will profit greatly from Sánchez’s surrender to Morocco over Western Sahara; meanwhile the politicised Spanish police prosecute Isabel Peralta for drawing attention to the treachery of Sánchez’s government. An employee of Chaib’s foundation brought the complaint that facilitated this prosecution.

It is a remarkable coincidence that the “charity worker” who brought the complaint against Isabel Peralta was an employee of Chaib’s foundation.

H&D fully supports our brave and brilliant comrade Isabel. We look forward to her victory over this politically motivated prosecution – however long that victory takes.

We shall be reporting further on the development of this case, and on the related political persecution of Isabel in Germany, which was assisted by border security in our own country who disgracefully detained her for more than six hours a few weeks ago during her visit to England. Check this website and our January edition of H&D for more extraordinary revelations about the state of European justice.

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