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'Al Qaeda financed Casablanca'
08/05/2004 21:17 - (SA)
Paris - The Islamic extremist group behind the deadly suicide bombings in Casablanca, and suspected in the Madrid attacks, received funds for the terror operation in Morocco from Osama bin Laden, according to the head of Morocco's security forces.
However, there is only an indirect connection between the May 16 Casablanca bombings and the March 11 train bombings in Madrid, General Hamidou Laanigri told the French daily Le Figaro in a rare interview to be published in its weekend edition.
As Morocco prepares to mark the first anniversary of the Casablanca attacks, Laanigri spelled out the connections uncovered by Moroccan investigators that led to the attacks that killed 33 bystanders and 12 suicide bombers.
Laanigri, director of Moroccan National Security, said that Moroccan members of al-Qaeda were behind the five nearly simultaneous attacks and that the "operational chief" was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian sought by the United States.
Moroccan members of al-Qaeda met with bin Laden and his top lieutenant Ayaman al-Zawahri and, with the help of al-Zarqawi, obtained money.
"In 2002, the Moroccan jihadists (holy warriors) asked bin Laden to give them financial help. Zarqawi, who believed in them, pulled a few strings," the general said. Laanigri said that dismantled networks led investigators to a group called the Libyan Islamic Combatant group which he described as regrouping North African jihadists, and to the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, or GICM suspected in the Madrid bombings that killed 191 people.
He did not explain in the Le Figaro interview how the two groups were connected. However, experts have said that the GICM was born in Afghanistan in the late 1990s as Libyans and Moroccans joined forces.
"Preparations continued with a meeting in Istanbul," the security chief said. He alleged that a British Moroccan, Mohamed Guerbouzi, presided over the meeting.
Guerbouzi was convicted in absentia by Morocco in December in connection with the Casablanca attacks and sentenced to 20 years in prison. However, he lives freely in Britain.
Moroccan courts convicted 700 people on various charges in connection with the attacks, handing down 17 death sentences. Laanigri said that "only a dozen dangerous elements" remain at large. Among them, he named Saad el-Houssaini, calling him an explosives expert.
The security chief said that Moroccans are implicated in the Madrid attacks simply because they are the largest Muslim community in Spain.
"The investigation has established that they were the executors and not the instigators," he said.
"There is no organic link" between the two attacks except for Jamel Zougam, a key suspect, and Abdelaziz Benyaich, who recruited him, Laanigri said. Benyaich was arrested in Spain in 2003, and Morocco is seeking his extradition.
"The relation between the two operations is, therefore, indirect. based on individuals who know each other," Laanigri said.
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