The town of Oued el Marsa plunges into the sea from the hills that frame the super port of Tanger Med, closer to Ceuta than to the Moroccan city from which it takes its name.
On one of the slopes overlooking the docks with macro cranes for containers, “God, country and king” is written on white stones, the motto of the Sherifian kingdom.
At dusk on Thursday, the most brutal backlighting broke out between the futuristic port facilities, an explosion of white neon, and the gloomy unpaved streets that lead to the Madrid bar in Oued el Marsa, the only place with apparent signs of life in the town, about 400 inhabitants.
A dozen parishioners had gathered in front of a television shortly before the start of the game that the two main teams from the capital of Spain were going to play.
"I am from Barça",
Utman intervened, a tough Riffian, in his thirties, hardened in the docks of Algeciras and the factories of the southern crown of Madrid, and who avoids giving his last name.
"We all knew Yassine Kanjaa," he recalls.
"She doesn't live here anymore, the drugs have eaten her head," he diagnoses, while the rest of the men nod in agreement.
Sources from the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior add that years ago he received treatment in a psychiatric center in Tangier, without offering further details.
They also specify that his name did not appear in the Moroccan judicial and police records.
while the rest of the men nod in agreement.
Sources from the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior add that years ago he received treatment in a psychiatric center in Tangier, without offering further details.
They also specify that his name did not appear in the Moroccan judicial and police records.
while the rest of the men nod in agreement.
Sources from the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior add that years ago he received treatment in a psychiatric center in Tangier, without offering further details.
They also specify that his name did not appear in the Moroccan judicial and police records.
Utman stares blankly at the lights of Algeciras on the horizon, which compete with those of Gibraltar, glimmering to the west of Tarifa.
It is the same landscape in which Kanjaa grew up, the perpetrator of the attacks with machetes in Algeciras that on Wednesday claimed the life of a sacristan and caused several injuries.
Among the residents of Oued el Marsa, covered with the thick djellabas of the coldest days of winter, there is an
omertá
pact that is not broken until a call from one of Kanjaa's housemates in Algeciras.
The law of silence fades little by little in the Madrid bar, but not the obstacles of the local authorities.
Yassine Kanjaa's house in Oued el Marsa, a small Moroccan coastal town located six kilometers from the border with Ceuta. Mohamed Siali (EFE)
In the dark, repulsive looks at the stranger seem to take on a glimmer of acceptance.
“I am Hasan Sellah, the mayor;
here you have to ask permission to ask questions.
You can't spend this night, the authority has prohibited it.
In addition, Yassine Kanjaa's parents are already in their 70s and they can't even be bothered”, warned the councilor, bearded and in his fifties, while he fingered the press accreditation granted by the Moroccan Ministry of Communication to the correspondent for EL PAÍS.
The Kanjaa family does not have a house in the center of the town, but in the tiny hamlet of El Hatba, at the foot of Mount Musa, a symbolic representation of the second column of Hercules that gives the replica of the Rock of Gibraltar in Africa.
Already on Friday morning, the spectacular landscape of the Strait and the obvious closeness between two worlds so far apart economically and culturally open up next to the mountain range.
Mayor Sellah has dialed the telephone number of the caid of Taghramt, 20 kilometers to the south, which groups the municipalities of the area in the caidato or commonwealth of the same name.
"He is in charge".
This is how Utman explains in Castilian Spanish to translate into his laborer's jargon in Spain who is the true representative of the central power in this confinement of the Rif.
The caíd, who did not want to identify himself, is the delegate of the Ministry of the Interior in the area, within the complex territorial division of the Maghreb country, which combines increasing administrative decentralization with centralism rooted in feudalism.
“He has to ask permission.
That's all, ”he explained in neat French.
Mohamed, 26, from Ceuta, moves with familiarity in the Isla Perejil restaurant on the outskirts of Oued el Marsa.
He has a privileged view over the Strait while displaying sea bream, squid and a silver swordfish in a refrigerated display case.
"Nobody dares to contradict the caid," he admits, while the ministry official walks around the premises and warns the foreign journalist again that he cannot access the village of El Hatba without permission.
Repeatedly, he is inhibited by calls from officials of the Ministries of Communication and the Interior who demand that he let the reporter pass.
More information
The roommates of the Algeciras attacker: "He said he saw the devil"
“Yassine Kanjaa was never well.
He was my friend, ”Mohamed assures in the restaurant as soon as the cayd leaves.
“We shared beers and joints, and we dated girls, we did everything, but it seems that lately it had changed.
Perhaps because of the drugs, because of his mental disorders.
They say that in his family there have been cases of mental illness, his father, a brother.
But I don't know it well, ”admits the man from Ceuta.
“When I was here and I was right in the head, if there was a jihadist attack, I condemned it.
'If I catch that bastard I'll kill him', he told me, but in Algeciras he panicked in the last month, and he changed.
He called me: 'You have to pray', he said, 'the devil has possessed me,' says Mohamed, who cannot say whether Kanjaa, who is the same age, had received psychiatric treatment.
“They called me on Wednesday from Algeciras.
'Look what your friend has done,' they said, ”he laments two days later.
The same chief of the Ministry of the Interior, responsible for local security who refused to provide access to the village until more than four hours later confirmed that Yassine Kanjaa had been treated years ago in a psychiatric center in Tangier, without offering details.
He also specified that his name did not appear in the judicial and police records of Morocco.
"What people say around here is that the man [Kanjaa] took drugs and that is what has affected him," diagnoses Utman in Oued el Marsa.
“It was very strange;
he didn't hang out with us.
It's been two years since we hardly heard from him.
He hung out with friends who weren't from the town.
When he went to Spain, he stopped communicating with the people here, ”he said with an air of perplexity.
“His family is from here.
We have known each other our whole lives ”, confirmed this neighbor.
“He lived with his parents and six siblings.
And he never had any major incidents.
He passed by us and just said hello.
Nothing more.
We didn't know anything about his life.
When I went to have breakfast in the morning [por el jueves] at the bar I found out everything”, Utman simply answers in Spanish with a strong North African sound.
A couple of kilometers from Isla Perejil and about 15 from the Ceuta border, at the access to the port of Tanger Med, children of 10 or 12 years old threw themselves under the trailers on Thursday at sunset, at the moment when the one where trucks slow down at a roundabout on their way to the Mediterranean ferries.
Since the informal trade of merchandise carriers on the Ceuta border ceased, drugs or the boat are almost the only escape routes for young people from the northernmost tip of Morocco.
"The good jobs in the new port and in the nearby Renault factory are taken by technicians and specialists from Rabat and Casablanca," says taxi driver Mohamed on the way to Oued el Marsa. "Nobody here wants to, or can't, study."
La hermosa, the only tourist business in the town, is left desolate in January.
Gliding boats sometimes depart from its sandbanks and fly over the waters with caches of hashish to the other side of the Strait.
With all the security barriers lifted, the place of El Hatba, which is accessed by a tortuous cracked concrete road, is presented as a new setting for the law of silence.
The Kanjaas' family home is empty, with no sign of recent occupancy.
A dog on a chain looks at the visitor without a bark.
“The family went to Tangier 10 years ago.
Yassine came from time to time.
She was not right in the head ”, abounds Ahmed Agzhi, a 45-year-old fisherman, after the midday prayer on Friday at the mosque, the only point with visible human presence in the village.
Abdel Jalak, 82, a farmer who lives in the house next to the Kanjaa's, insists that they have lived permanently in Tangier for ten years.
“A few seasons go by.
Young Yassine had been ill for about three years and before that he had problems with drugs.
Now we are very affected.
It is the first time that someone from this town commits such a horrible crime ”, he assures, while he says goodbye sadly after finishing the prayer.
Muhamed Muracim, a 62-year-old municipal services assistant, points out: "The Kanjaa family passed through here two weeks ago."
The mayor of Oued el Marsa believed on Thursday night that Yassine Kanjaa's parents were sleeping in their house in the village.
The next day, Hasan Shellal shrugs his shoulders in the presence of a Royal Gendarmerie officer and the omnipresent caid.
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