Al-Qaeda recruiting networks pose growing threat to Morocco

13/07/2007

Magharebia examines al-Qaeda's methods of recruiting Moroccans to train abroad and fight in Iraq. Investigations have revealed these recruitment networks are also used to plan attacks on Moroccan soil.

By Mawassi Lahcen in Casablanca and Adil Dekkaki in Washington for Magharebia – 13/07/2007

[Getty Images] A Moroccan security guard stands in front of a restaurant in Rabat on July 9th. Security forces are on maximum alert after receiving threats of terror attacks from Moroccans returning from terrorist training and combat abroad.

Recent police investigations have revealed that al-Qaeda recruitment networks in Morocco play a dual role, both recruiting fighters for Iraq and co-ordinating attacks at home.

An official inquiry into arrested al-Qaeda ringleader Khaled El Taher, who allegedly recruited 26 Moroccans in five months to fight in Iraq, has shed light on the phenomenon of terrorist recruiting in Morocco and the danger returned fighters pose to national security.

Since the end of 2006, Moroccan authorities have shut down 12 recruiting rings in cities across the country. Twenty-nine people in total have been detained in connection with these cells and await trial at the terrorism court in Salé, scheduled to begin September 14th.

According to police records obtained by Magharebia, al-Qaeda recruited Taher in June 2006 through Abdel Ali Muftah, a merchant from Tetouan. Muftah noticed Taher’s zeal and interest in events in Iraq, and proposed sending him to fight. Taher rejected the idea but agreed to Muftah's suggestion that he contribute by recruiting volunteers.

According to police documents, Taher was smuggled into Algeria along with members of his cell to meet with a leader of the al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, at that meeting the al-Qaeda leader requested $90,000 from Taher to set up a camp in western Algeria to train Moroccan recruits.

Police records show that Taher's Iraq-bound recruits typically flew from Casablanca to Turkey and entered Syria by bus before proceeding into Iraq.

According to the statement attributed to Taher, Muftah moved to Brussels in August of the same year to coordinate the recruiting network. Communications were carried out using mobile phones and the Internet. Upon arrival in Syria, new recruits contacted Taher in Morocco and gave him a Syrian phone number. Taher in turn contacted Muftah in Brussels to inform him of the recruit’s arrival in Syria and to give him the Syrian phone number. From Brussels, Muftah served as the point of connection between the Moroccan recruit in Syria and Iraqis who would organise his entry into Iraq.

Investigations have revealed discussions within Taher's recruiting network of sending volunteers abroad to receive training and then returning to carry out operations against US and Western interests in Morocco.

[Getty Images] The 2003 Casablanca attacks killed 45 people

The March arrest of Saad al-Houssaini, suspected of involvement in the deadly Casablanca attacks in 2003, sheds more light on the dual role played by these al-Qaeda recruits in sending fighters to Iraq and planning attacks at home.

After a four-year stay in Afghanistan, al-Houssaini returned to his native Casablanca in 2002. He had left Morocco in 1992 to study chemistry in Spain, where he became radicalized after meeting a Tunisian friend who urged him to support Islamist fighters in Afghanistan. According to a transcript of his police interrogation published in Le Journal Hebdomadaire, al-Husseini fled Afghanistan for Iran and subsequently to Syria and Turkey after the US bombing campaign began.

Nicknamed "The Chemist", al-Houssaini is believed to have fashioned the bombs that killed 45 people in Casablanca in 2003. According to police, by October 2006 he and other radicals had created several recruitment networks to send would-be suicide bombers to Iraq. Police records cite at least 18 Moroccans recruited by his network and sent to Iraq earlier this year. Al-Houssaini also designed explosive belts that investigators believe were used in a series of suicide attacks in March and April of this year.

In a series of conversations with Magharebia, Mohamed Darif, a Moroccan terrorism analyst and political science professor at Hassan II University in Mohammedia, said that these cells are linked directly to al-Qaeda. He said many of the cells have ties to Algeria-based al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb – the former GSPC – which has purportedly signed onto al-Qaeda's strategy to exploit the US presence in Iraq to attract Arab jihadists and work towards the establishment of an Islamic state in the Arab world, including the Maghreb.

"For certain, this organisation wants to bring together all jihadi Salafists in the Arab Maghreb region, including Moroccan, Tunisian, Libyan and Mauritanian jihadists. The [GSPC's] announcement of its name change came to crown [efforts] to form cells in various Maghreb nations, especially given that the group’s camps in the Algerian Sahara were utilised to train a considerable number of Moroccans," Darif said.

"Now the al-Qaeda Organisation is asking the al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, which became its implementing [body] in the region, for two main things: recruitment of combatants to send to Iraq and formation of cells capable of directing strikes against the prevailing regimes in the Arab Maghreb region," Darif added.

Morocco raised its security alert to its highest level last week after EU and Israeli intelligence services allegedly informed them of a serious terrorist threat against the country. Director-General of Interior Affairs at the Ministry of the Interior, Mohieddine Amzazi Wali, confirmed the credibility of the information and called a meeting last Saturday to assess the threat and formulate an appropriate action plan. The following day, the Interior Ministry released a communiqué calling on Moroccans for greater mobilisation and vigilance against terrorist threats.

On July 10th, Arabic-language daily Al Massa reported that Moroccan police had arrested 15 suspected members of al-Qaeda allegedly preparing attacks on sensitive targets in the country. The suspects reportedly entered the country from an al-Qaeda base in Algeria. In a separate report, Assabah reported that a Moroccan anti-terrorist police squad responded to a tip from French intelligence that led to the arrests of three al-Qaeda members suspected of preparing bomb attacks in Morocco.