17 held as Moroccan police smash terror network

Moroccan police have dismantled a terrorist network, arresting 17 people, including two former prisoners at the US base at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay reported.

At least some of the suspects were linked to al-Qaida in Iraq, it was reported.

Brahim Benchekroun and Mohammed Mazouz – among five Moroccans freed from Guantanamo Bay in August 2004 – were among the suspects, the official MAP news agency said yesterday.

They were arrested on November 11 at their homes in connection with a probe into al-Qaida, a Moroccan security official said.

Information about the network, dismantled before it was fully structured, remained sketchy, and it was unclear when the 15 other arrests were made.

The top two suspects, Khaled Azig and Mohamed R’ha, were recruiting extremists for their cause, MAP quoted police as saying. Members of the network had links with small groups on the Iraqi border and close ties to leading members of the al-Qaida terror network, MAP reported.

No details were provided, including the exact nature of the link to al-Qaida.

Al-Qaida in Iraq is reportedly holding two Moroccan embassy employees, Abdelkrim el-Mouhafidi and his driver, Abderrahim Boualam. They disappeared on October 20 while driving to Baghdad from Jordan.

Morocco’s intelligence services have been tracking Azig, one of the two lead suspects in the network, since March. The Moroccan once studied theology in Syria and made frequent trips to Turkey, but returned to Morocco in June, police said.

Azig was joined on September 29 by R’ha, a Belgian of Moroccan origin known to have close ties with North Africans in Europe. He had also made trips to Syria, MAP reported.

The two men were in the process of recruiting Islamic extremists when their efforts were cut short by the arrests, the agency said.

Benchekroun and Mazouz, the former Guantanamo prisoners, were among those being recruited, according to police.

Arrested in Pakistan and Afghanistan in late 2001, they were among five Moroccans accused of taking training courses in how to handle firearms and make explosives.

A suspected former bodyguard of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, Abdellah Tabarak, was one of the five released. Turned over to Moroccan authorities in August 2004, after two years and eight months in the US detention camp, the five were given provisional freedom. The five all face trial.

Morocco has been tracking Islamic extremists since bombing attacks in Casablanca in 2003 killed 45 people – 13 of them suicide bombers. The Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group is suspected in the bombings that authorities have said were linked to al-Qaida.

The arrests were announced hours after French interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy concluded a meeting with his Moroccan counterpart, Mustapha Sahel, devoted mainly to the fight against terrorism.