RABAT, 4 September 2003 — Twin sisters have been arrested in Morocco accused of plotting to carry out attacks in the capital, Rabat, police said yesterday.
Two Moroccan dailies — Al-Ittihad Al-Ichtiraki and Assabah — reported that the sisters, whose surname was given as Laghrissi, were plotting with extremist groups to carry out a suicide attack against a supermarket in a residential area of Rabat.
A police source contacted by AFP confirmed that the two sisters had been arrested days before the planned attack.
According to the newspapers, the twins had written to the chief cleric at a Rabat mosque to ask if their planned attack was “legal.” The cleric replied that it wasn’t.
The sisters then contacted two fundamentalist groups in Morocco —Ahl Assounna Wal Jamaa and Al Hijra Wa Attakfir — who sent the twins documents on Jihad, or holy war, Al-Ittihad Al-Ichtiraki wrote. “This reassured the two sisters as they plotted their suicide attack,” the paper wrote. The twin sisters’ arrests came as Morocco gears up for delayed local elections, due Sept. 12.
Suicide attacks in May in Casablanca, Morocco’s economic hub, killed 45 people, including 12 suspected suicide bombers.
Yesterday, the trial of a Frenchman, Pierre Robert, accused of playing a key role in the May 16 bombings in Casablanca and 33 of his alleged accomplices resumed in Rabat. They face the death penalty if found guilty.
The trial, which has been adjourned three times after opening late last month, resumed in the presence of French lawyer Vincent Courcelle-Labrousse, who had come to Morocco to act as defense counsel to Robert alongside Moroccan lawyer Abdelfattah Zahrach.
Courcelle-Labrousse told reporters at the court before the trial resumed that he had decided to plead Robert’s defense largely because of his “fierce” opposition to the death penalty. Last month, a Moroccan court sentenced four Islamic activists to death and dozens to heavy jail terms for the Casablanca attacks.
The trial of Robert and his alleged accomplices had been due to resume last week but was adjourned partly because some of the accused, including the Frenchman, had been injured in a traffic accident on their way to court.
Defense lawyers also complained last week that relatives of the accused had been barred from attending the trial, meaning it was not a “public hearing” as required under law. Members of the defendants’ families were allowed yesterday into the courthouse in Rabat for the trial.
Robert and his 33 Moroccan “accomplices” allegedly formed “armed and well-organized criminal bands within Salafia Jihadia,” the banned extremist movement suspected of being behind the Casablanca bombings.
