The General Directorate of Studies and Documentation (, ; DGED) is the foreign

intelligence agency An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, Intelligence analysis, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy obj ...

Morocco Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to Algeria–Morocc ...

, under authority of the Administration for National Defense. It is officially tasked with maintaining national security and the safety of national institutions. The current general director of the DGED is Mohammed Yassine Mansouri, who studied with Mohammed VI at the Royal College and previously ran Maghreb Arabe Press. Mansouri was appointed to the position by Mohammed VI on February 14, 2005. The agency collaborates often with its internal counterpart, the DGST.

History

The DGED was created on January 12, 1973 under a Royal Dahir, in the aftermath of two failed coups against Hassan II. It was modeled after the now-defunct French

Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage Service may refer to: Activities * Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty * Civil service, the body of employees of a government * Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or ...

. The directorate was run by Ahmed Dlimi until his death in 1983. Dlimi previously ran the CAB-1, a political police unit during the Years of Lead that later became the DGST. Following Dlimi's death, General Abdelhak El Kadiri headed the DGED until his retirement in 2001. Following El Kadiri's retirement, Ahmed Harchi was appointed as the head of the DGED in July 2001. Mohammed Yassine Mansouri named the general director of the DGED by King Mohammed VI on February 14, 2005, becoming the first civilian to hold the title. The DGED caused controversy following the 2003 Casablanca bombings for its help in the arrest and conviction of six high-ranking politicians in the Justice and Development Party for complicity in the bombings. A reporter for Al-Manar, a TV station affiliated with

Hezbollah Hezbollah ( ; , , ) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament. I ...

was also convicted under the same charges. In a 2009 interview, Mohammed Yassine Mansouri claimed that the spread of

Wahhabism Wahhabism is an exonym for a Salafi revivalist movement within Sunni Islam named after the 18th-century Hanbali scholar Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. It was initially established in the central Arabian region of Najd and later spread to oth ...

and

Shia Islam Shia Islam is the second-largest Islamic schools and branches, branch of Islam. It holds that Muhammad in Islam, Muhammad designated Ali ibn Abi Talib () as both his political Succession to Muhammad, successor (caliph) and as the spiritual le ...

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...

and

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

as a threat, claiming that both ideologies were aggressive. In the same interview, Mansouri also claimed that Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was seen a major threat by Morocco. In 2014, a Twitter account named ''@chris_coleman24'', which was likely controlled by the French DGSE, leaked documents and emails between Moroccan consulates and the DGED, the user claimed that their goal was to "destabilize Morocco". Arrêt sur Images claimed that some of the documents leaked by the user were falsified. Morocco's

Ministry of Foreign Affairs In many countries, the ministry of foreign affairs (abbreviated as MFA or MOFA) is the highest government department exclusively or primarily responsible for the state's foreign policy and relations, diplomacy, bilateral, and multilateral r ...

accused "pro- Polisario organizations" with the complicity of the Algerian government of running the Twitter account. Despite this, Algérie Presse Service claims that the leaker was a "famous American hacker". In 2017, the French IGPN arrested an officer of the French Border Police for allegedly giving the DGED files on up to 200 people marked under a Fiche S, France's indicator for people deemed a threat to national security. In 2021, the IGPN claimed that members of the DGED had infiltrated the French Council of the Muslim Faith. In 2022, the DGED was caught in a scandal involving its agents infiltrating the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it ...

. In 2023, the DGED was involved in rescuing Romanian citizen Iulian Ghergut from al-Qaeda sympathizers in Burkina Faso.

Directors

* Ahmed Dlimi (1973-1983) * Abdelhak Kadiri (1983-2001) * Ahmed El Harchi (2001-2005) * Yassine Mansouri (2005-present)

Activities

The DGED states its official mission as "participating in maintaining the security of the kingdom, the state and its institutions". According to a 2003 report by Maroc Hebdo, the DGED has 4,000 employees total, 60% of which are members of the Royal Armed Forces, the remaining being civilians. According to the same report, 5% of DGED employees are women, and there are an estimated 250 to 300 agents abroad working for the DGED. The DGED collaborates with foreign services in security and terrorism-related affairs, including exchange of information regarding specific Moroccans targeted by foreign services. Mohamed Reda Taoujni, previous owner of the journal Assahra Al Ousbouiya, claimed that the DGED controlled his journal and had published articles to the journal and its online counterpart through pseudonyms. According to Ali Lmrabet, the DGED was reported to have staff in consulates and embassies of Morocco, hence benefiting from

diplomatic immunity Diplomatic immunity is a principle of international law by which certain foreign government officials are recognized as having legal immunity from the jurisdiction of another country.

. Lmrabet adds that the DGED used journalists working for the Maghreb Arabe Press as agents, and journalists were allegedly tasked with sending wires to the DGED containing information they gathered.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Direction generale des etudes et de la documentation Government of Morocco Moroccan intelligence agencies Law enforcement in Morocco 1973 establishments in Morocco