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November 20, 2005
Morocco: An Emerging Islamist Terror Cell is Broken - Guantanamo Links
From today's le Monde, a report that in Morocco, security forces arrested 17 Islamists, one of whom was of Belgian origin, all close to al-Qaeda, who made up a "terrorist cell". The news was announced from Rabat, the capital, today but states the arrests happened at the start of November.
The Moroccan police source states that the arrests happened in Rabat and Casablanca, and that the individuals will be presented at court on Monday (tomorrow).
Since March 2005, security services had been interested in the comings and goings to Morocco of a man by name of Khaed Azig, a former student of theology in Syria and making frequent journeys between Turkey and Morocco. This man entered Morocco on June 2005, and had been joined on 29 September by another suspect, Mohamed Reha, a Belgian of Moroccan origin. Reha had been known to have stayed in Syria and known to have close links to Islamists in Europe.
Arrested in Casablanca, Khaled Azig and Mohamed Reha had come to Morocco with a mission to "recruit members for the purpose of building a terrorist structure", claims the same source.
According to the Moroccan security forces, the two men "had recruited individuals immersed in extremist ideologies" who were part of the dismantled network, and they had equally established relations with Moroccans "who had undergone paramilitary training in Afghanistan, including two former detainees from Guantanamo, on conditional liberty in the country, Brahim Benchekroun and Mohamed Mazouz, who had joined in their projects."
On 15 November, a police source said that three of the five Moroccan former detainees from Guantanamo, who had been freed before an anti-terrorist tribunal, had been placed in detention for having aided the infiltration of an al-Qaeda member into Morocco. The Moroccan police since then have reinforced security in towns, airports, ports, public places such as stations and open areas such as those surrounding embassies.
At the start of November, a small Moroccan Islamist group, which had already threatened to kill a Moroccan teacher in its writings, announced a declaration of "war without mercy" against the authorities in Rabat "for total elimination", and that it wanted to "deliver the people (,,,) of Mohammed VI" [the king]. But a source from the security forces had declared to AFP (news agency) to "not give any credence" to this text, signed by the "Tawhid and Jihad Islamist Group in Morocco", a name carried by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group in Iraq before it became a branch of al-Qaeda.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at November 20, 2005 3:20 PM
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