RABAT, 27 September 2003 — Moroccan courts have sentenced two Islamists to death for murder and preparing terrorist acts, and passed heavy jail sentences on two Islamist preachers said to be the brains behind suicide attacks in May.

Sixteen people have now been sentenced to death in Morocco since suicide bombings in Casablanca in May killed 45 people, including the 12 bombers.

Abdelouhab Rabii, who was sentenced to death by a Rabat court late on Thursday, admitted to strangling a Justice Ministry official with the help of Hamid Slimani, who was also condemned to death, the official MAP news agency said. Rabii also admitted stealing arms from a barracks in the eastern town of Taza last year with the help of a soldier.

In Casablanca, also late on Thursday, another court sentenced prominent preachers Hassan Al-Kettani and Abdelwahab Rafiki to 20 years and 30 years in prison, respectively, for having inspired the Casablanca bombers.

Kettani, who comes from a well-known family of religious scholars, told the court that although he was “against American imperialism and against Zionism” he had never preached violence or jihad.

The public prosecutor had asked for the death penalty for the preachers. He said statements from some of the more than 80 men sentenced for involvement in the Casablanca bombings proved they had advocated violence.

On hearing his sentence, Kettani smiled and waved at relatives in the courtroom. The preachers’ four defense lawyers boycotted the closing day of the trial after the five-judge panel refused to call the prosecution witnesses to testify.

In August, death sentences were pronounced against four adherents of the Salafist Jihad movement found guilty of direct involvement in planning the Casablanca attacks on May 16. The government has said the nebulous group has links to Al-Qaeda but has offered no evidence.

In July, 10 members of another group, Attakfir wal-Hijra (Atonement and Migration), were sentenced to death for violent crimes committed before the Casablanca bombings. The death penalty was also sought for French convert to Islam Pierre Robert, the only foreigner so far convicted on terrorism charges among the more than 900 people charged in the aftermath of the bombings.

Robert was sentenced on Sept. 18 to life imprisonment for organizing explosives training for Salafist Jihad sympathizers from his base in Tangiers, northern Morocco. Morocco has carried out the death sentence only once in the last 20 years.

Meanwhile, teenage Moroccan twin sisters appeared in court yesterday on charges of plotting attacks in Rabat and against the king and royal family, a lawyer told AFP. The 14-year-old twins, who have been named by Liberation newspaper as Imane and Sanae Al-Ghariss, were arrested in early September and accused of plotting with a friend, also 14, and radical Islamic accomplices to carry out a suicide attack in a supermarket in Rabat’s residential Souissi neighborhood.

No official explanation was given about what the plot against the royal family might have been, but a lawyer close to the trial said the girls had told an investigating judge about an “idea” they had to attack the highest authorities in the North African kingdom, including King Mohammed. But the twins had never planned any specific action, the lawyer told AFP.

The sisters appeared in court with their teenage girlfriend and suspected accomplice, and 17 alleged extremists aged between 22 and 32, sources at the trial in Rabat said. Soon after the hearing opened, it was adjourned until Monday at the request of the defense. No explanation was available immediately for the adjournment.

The three girls will be tried in a closed court and separately from their suspected adult accomplices. A police source has told AFP that the sisters were arrested in early September, days before they intended to carry out their attack in Rabat.

The press had earlier reported that the girls and their alleged extremist accomplices were accused of “forming a criminal association” and “planning a terrorist act”. The newspaper Al-Ahdath Al-Maghribia has said the three teenage girls had set up a “terrorist network” which targeted “high-ranking government officials.”

In addition to the attack on the supermarket in Souissi, the network also planned to blow up the Parliament building in Rabat, the paper said. Liberation newspaper has reported that the twins had dabbled in begging and prostitution in Rabat before being “fascinated” by the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States and turning to radical Islam.

One of the twins planned to blow herself up in the alcohol and spirits section of the supermarket, press reports have said. The twins’ teenage friend and accomplice, named by the press as Hakima Rijlane, allegedly planned to steal a gun from a relative who serves in the police force, to help carry out the alleged attacks.