56 arrested in terror plot, Morocco reports

PARIS — Moroccan police have arrested 56 suspected members of a terrorist network as part of a monthlong anti-terror sweep, the country's official news agency reported.

The suspects, associated with a Muslim group calling itself Ansar al-Mahdi, are accused of plotting terrorist attacks in the North African kingdom, the official MAP news agency said Thursday. Moroccan officials could not be reached for comment on Friday.

The group was planning to "announce a holy war in the mountains of North Morocco, attack sensitive targets, foreign interests and well-known Moroccans because they represent the state or for moral reasons," the news agency quoted the interior minister, Chakib Benmoussa, as saying.

Morocco, a moderate Islamic country, has been battling a radical Islamic movement that inspired deadly suicide bombings in Casablanca in 2003. The fundamentalist Islamic trend has continued to grow among the largely disenfranchised youths of Morocco's poorest quarters despite anti-terrorist crackdowns.

Benmoussa told a parliamentary commission last week that the Ansar al-Mahdi group had amassed "material to manufacture far more explosives" than those used during the 2003 bombings, according to a MAP report of the meeting.

Local news reports have also said that the group planned to kidnap Moroccan politicians, including at least two ministers and several legislators.

Four women were among those arrested, including the wives of two pilots for the national airline, Royal Air Maroc, according to Benmoussa. One of the women had had contacts with the wife of a slain member of al-Qaida from Morocco who was accused of helping plan the 2005 Madrid train bombings, the ministry said.

Those arrested also included at least five former soldiers with training in the use of explosives. Benmoussa told the parliamentary commission that while the recruitment of members of the military and security services was a new element, the number of the members recruited was very limited and involved isolated and marginal cases. He said one of the men recruited belonged to a military music unit and another to a vehicle servicing department.

After the Casablanca bombings, the Moroccan authorities arrested thousands of Islamists and claimed to have uncovered dozens of terrorist cells, some linked to al-Qaida.

Among those sent to jail was Hassan el-Khattab, also known as Abu Osama, who was released last year after serving two years. The Interior Ministry describes him as the leader of the terrorist group. He was among about 50 people arrested when the current crackdown began in late July.

The Interior Ministry said Khattab operated a training camp for would-be terrorists in the country's northern mountains and that he carried out tests of cell-phone detonators in a forest near Rabat.

The police have seized explosives, laboratory materials and propaganda leaflets during recent raids on the group, the ministry said.