RABAT, 5 September 2003 — Twins arrested shortly before an alleged plan to blow up a supermarket here are 14 years old and hatched their plot with an age mate as well as five adults, a legal source said yesterday.
The twins were plotting with a friend, also 14, and radical Islamist accomplices to carry out a suicide attack in the store in Rabat’s residential Souissi neighborhood, the source said. All eight suspects were arrested “recently” and have appeared before the state prosecutor, he said.
The Moroccan press reported yesterday that the three girls were being held in the minors’ section of a prison in Sale, near Rabat. They and their five alleged extremist accomplices are accused of “forming a criminal association” and “planning a terrorist act.”
The newspaper Al Ahdath Al Maghribia said the three girls had set up a “terrorist network” which also targeted “high-ranking government officials.” The network also planned to blow up the Parliament building in Rabat, the paper said. Liberation newspaper said the twins, whom it named as Imane and Sanae Al-Ghariss, had dabbled in begging and prostitution in Rabat before being “fascinated” by the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States and turning their attention to radical Islam.
A police source contacted by AFP confirmed newspaper reports that the two sisters had been arrested “days before” their planned supermarket attack. According to the newspapers, the twins had written to the chief cleric at a Rabat mosque to ask whether the attack would be “legal.” After the cleric replied in the negative, the sisters contacted two Muslim extremist groups in Morocco — Ahl Assounna wal Jamaa and Al Hijra wa Attakfir — who sent them 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. One of the twins planned to blow herself up in the wines and spirits section of the supermarket, press reports said. The twins’ friend and accomplice, named by the press as 14-year-old Hakima Rijlane, allegedly planned to steal a gun from a relative who serves in the police force.
Morocco’s economic hub, Casablanca, was rocked by the north African country’s first suicide bomb attacks in May. Those attacks killed 45 people, including 12 suspected suicide bombers.
The arrests of the three teenage girls and their suspected extremist accomplices came as a court here late Wednesday adjourned till Sept. 8 the trial of 34 suspected Islamists accused over the suicide attacks in May, including their alleged ringleader, Frenchman Pierre Robert. Rabat criminal court decided to adjourn the case due to the fatigue of Robert, 31, who like the other accused faces the death sentence. He told the court he was too tired to undergo questioning.
The accused are charged with criminal conspiracy, conspiracy to undermine state security, premeditated murder and possession of arms and explosives in connection with the attacks in Casablanca.
Abdelfattah Zahrach, one of Robert’s lawyers, argued earlier that the case should go before another court because the criminal court was only declared competent to hear the case under Morocco’s new anti-terrorism law, passed on May 28 — or after the date of the attacks in Casablanca.
The new anti-terror law broadens the definition of terrorism, stiffens penalties, and makes it easier for courts to hear cases classified as terrorist.
Another defense lawyer demanded that some of the accused, charged with obtaining or hiding weapons, be tried by a military tribunal, not the criminal court.
