Terrorist hunt turns to Morocco
2005-07-10 09:41
Dominique Pettit
Rabat - The probe into the deadly London bombings and the forthcoming trial of the suspected murderer of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh are raising questions over Morocco's role in international terrorism.
A London-based Moroccan, Mohammed al Garbuzi, was one of the first people to be named in the press in connection with Thursday's blasts in the British capital which killed 55 people and injured another 700.
According to Britain's Independent and Daily Mail newspapers on Saturday Scotland Yard and MI5 have urgently requested European agencies to help trace Garbuzi who has vanished.
Moroccan nationals, or people of Moroccan origin, have in fact been named in the investigations into the main terrorist attacks of the past few years around the world.
They include the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States in which about 3 000 people died and the March 11, 2004 Madrid train bombings which killed 191 people.
And in another indication of the Moroccan connection the man accused of the murder of Dutch filmmaker van Gogh, Mohammed Bouyeri, whose trial opens on Monday, has duel Dutch-Moroccan nationality and is presented as an Islamic militant by police.
Van Gogh, who was shot and stabbed to death while cycling in Amsterdam on November 2, 2004, was widely known for his criticism of Islam.
As his murder prompted a spate of anti-Islamic acts in the Netherlands, the Rabat authorities rejected a call from a senior Dutch politician, Frits Bolkestein, on King Mohammed VI of Morocco to condemn Islamist extremism and show Morocco "does not want to be an exporter of murderers".
Moroccan justice minister Mohammed Bouzoubaa also strongly contested the claim that Morocco was involved in Islamic extremism in the Netherlands, pointing to the duel nationality of some of those involved, and that some had been born in the Netherlands.
Although the Moroccan presence in terrorist hot-spots around the world had been noticed for some time, the May 16, 2003 attacks in the Moroccan city of Casablanca drove the point home for Rabat.
The five bomb blasts, which killed 45 people including 12 suicide bombers, were carried out by a group of Moroccans all of whom lived in a run-down neighbourhood of the city.
During a large-scale police operation more than a thousand radical Islamic militants were arrested and police pinned the attacks on two Moroccan fundamentalist organisations, the Salafia Jihadia organisation and Assirat al Moustaqim (the right road).
Some Moroccans who were strongly suspected of links to extremists ended up being released.
Abdelghani Mzoudi, who was acquitted by a Hamburg court of involvement in the September 11, 2001 attacks for lack of proof in February last year, was definitively cleared in June 2005 by the German court of justice.
A Moroccan - Mounir el Motassadeq - was also the subject of the first trial, in Hamburg, related to the September 11 attacks.
He received a 15-year prison sentence in February 2003 for complicity in the attacks, but is currently facing a retrial, after the German court of justice ordered a new procedure on the grounds that US authorities refused to hand over important evidence.
- SAPA