A high number of Moroccans involved in terrorism cases

By Olivier Guitta

When one thinks of the nationality of Islamist terrorists, Pakistanis and Saudis are usually the ones that come to mind. But a moderate Muslim country is unfortunately slowly, against its will, providing a very concerning and large number of terrorists. This country is Morocco.

I wrote an article for the Middle East Times on that topic.
You can read it in full here.

Here is an excerpt:
Until recently Morocco was more likely to be associated with tourism, rather than terrorism. That trend however is slowly changing.

That change began on May 16, 2003 when Morocco suffered its first experience at the hands of Islamist terrorism. That day, Casablanca was hit with four simultaneous terror attacks that left 45 people dead and hundreds injured. Al-Qaida style attacks were perpetrated by Moroccan citizens belonging to the GICM (Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, known by its French acronym), a group affiliated with Osama bin Laden's organization.

Needless to say that the kingdom was stunned that its sons had turned violently against it. Since then numerous - over 30 - local Islamist cells have been dismantled by Moroccan security forces that have tackled the problem head-on. Most of the cells have been linked to terrorist networks specializing in recruitment of volunteers for al-Qaida in Iraq, some of whom cooperate with individuals based in France and Belgium. Also the Mezwak mosque in Tetouan, where over a dozen young men were recruited to commit suicide attacks against coalition forces in Iraq, has become quite infamous. The Saudi-owned daily Asharq al-Awsat called it " the highway for suicide bombers to Iraq." Unsurprisingly, among foreigners, Moroccans are second in the number of jihadists in Iraq right after the Saudi contingent.

But that is not all: Moroccans living abroad are more and more showing up in Islamist terror groups. In fact Moroccans have been involved in terror operations from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan, from Iraq to Spain, from Holland to Belgium.

The first major terror operations outside of Morocco where Moroccans were involved was the Madrid Mar. 11, 2004 attacks that killed 191. Interestingly, some of the alleged perpetrators of these attacks were attending the Tetouan mosque. On Dec. 5, a Moroccan court sentenced Hisham Ahmidan to 10 years in prison for his role in the Madrid attacks.

Then in November 2004, Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan gruesomely murdered Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam.

In Feb. 2008 one of the largest Islamist networks in Morocco was dismantled. Called after its leader the Belliraj network had planned to hit multiple targets inside the kingdom; 35 people were arrested then, most of them had connections to Belgium. Unsurprisingly, on Nov. 27 Belgium arrested another 11 people linked to the Belliraj network on an international arrest warrant issued by Morocco. Six of them are Moroccans, one of them had a rocket launcher in his home.

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