RABAT, 4 November 2003 — Moroccan authorities have charged over 100 people with links to terrorism over the past 10 days as part of a crackdown on hard-line Islamists that began after suicide bombings in May, judicial sources said yesterday.
The latest batch brought before courts includes a group of men charged with attempting to enforce their own version of Islamic law in the neighborhood of Sale, near Rabat. The authorities have kept people seen as radical Islamists under close surveillance since 12 Islamist suicide bombers killed 33 people in the business capital Casablanca in May.
Five members of the Adl wal Ihsane (Justice and Charity) association, a nonviolent Islamist movement which has not been allowed to form a political party, are among the latest defendants charged under broad anti-terrorism legislation introduced within days of the bombings.
Justice and Charity spokesman Fathallah Arsalane said one of the five was a student from Marrakech charged with having made “declarations interpreted by the authorities as incitement to terrorism” at a campus meeting.
The country’s leading human rights group, the Moroccan Human Rights Association, said the terrorism cases failed to meet standards for a fair trial.
