France’s FM Apologizes to Moroccan Foreign Minister over “Humiliating” Treatment

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Rabat - French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Laurent Fabuis, apologized on Friday to his Moroccan counterpart, Salaheddine Mezouar, after the “humiliating” way in which the Moroccan Minister was treated at Paris Charles De Gaulle airport.

"Laurent Fabius called his Moroccan counterpart to present the apologies of the French authorities for the inconvenience that has been caused to him while transiting at Charles de Gaulle airport," the spokesman Quai d'Orsay, Romain Nadal was quoted by Le Figaro as saying.

"The minister immediately asked the competent department of the Ministry of the Interior and Paris Airport that everything be done to enforce strictly in French airports the rules and diplomatic practices that apply to foreign ministers and heads of state and government," he added.

In its edition of Friday, the Moroccan newspaper Assabah reported that the French custom services subjected Salaheddine Mezouar, Morocco’s Foreign Minister, to what it described as a “humiliating” search while he was on transit at Paris Charles De Gaulle airport on his way to Morocco.

According to the same source, the inspection procedure, described as “degrading” was long, while the head of Moroccan diplomacy was forced to remove his coat, belt and other footwear.

The incident happens a month after the relations between Morocco and France entered a period of tension and turbulence following a lawsuit filed by an NGO against Abdellatif Hammouchi, the head of Moroccan Domestic Intelligence Agency (DGST), and the decision of a French judge to send 7 policemen to Moroccan ambassador’s residence to inform Hammouchi, who was accompanying the Interior Minister on a visit to Paris, of a summon issued by the investigating judge.

Few days later, French press reported a statement made by Javier Bardem, one of the staunch supporters of the Polisario, in which he allegedly said that during a meeting he had held with France’s Ambassador to the United Nations in 2011, the French diplomat had told him that “Morocco is a mistress who you sleep with every night, who you don’t particularly love but you have to defend.”