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Al-Qaeda funded Morocco blasts
24/05/2003 17:29 - (SA)
Casablanca - The al-Qaeda network contributed more than $50 000 to help organise and carry out last week's suicide bombings in Morocco, the Arab daily Asharq Al Awsat reported on Saturday.
"A top leader of al-Qaeda living abroad transferred more than $50 000 several months ago to Morocco to pay for the execution of the operation," the newspaper, which is edited in London and Casablanca, said, citing Moroccan officials did not wish to be named.
The Casablanca bomb attacks, which killed 42 people including 12 suicide bombers on May 16, have been traced to Moroccan radical groups, and investigators have uncovered links to Islamic extremists operating in Europe.
Authorities have also implicated an "international terrorist network" without directly naming al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's network responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
The newspaper said the five simultaneous attacks on Jewish and foreign targets were "directed and financed by the al-Qaeda organisation", citing the same anonymous sources.
Legal sources close to the investigation have said the suicide bombers had been trained in making homemade bombs in the Casablanca-area slums where they lived, and were thought to have received logistical direction from contacts in Belgium, the Netherlands or Italy.
Sweeps of radicals and interrogations have focussed on local radical Islamic groups Assirat al Moustakim (The Straight Path) and Salafia Jihadia.
Radical Islamism in Morocco has been fanned by perceived US aggression in the Arab world and Rabat's generally warm official ties with the United States.
In a broadcast attributed to bin Laden last February, Morocco was branded an "apostate nation" alongside Saudi Arabia - which suffered a triple suicide bombing three days before the Casablanca attacks - and four other states.
- AFX
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