RABAT, 25 July 2004 — A court in the Moroccan capital has sentenced 27 militants to jail terms ranging from two to 15 years on charges under tough anti-terrorism laws adopted after 45 people were killed in a series of bomb attacks last year, judicial sources said yesterday. One of the accused was jailed for 15 years and three others received 12-year sentences after being convicted of “forming a criminal gang with the aim of preparing and carrying out acts of terrorism.” They were also found guilty of failing to denounce other suspects and of holding unauthorized public meetings.
Sixteen other people were jailed from two to eight years on related charges, while one person was acquitted and six were fined 5,000 dirhams ($540) each, the sources said. The sentences were handed down on Friday. On the first anniversary of the May 16, 2003, attacks on Morocco’s largest city, Casablanca, the Justice Ministry said that 2,112 militants had been charged so far. Among them 903 had been sentenced, 17 to death.
Meanwhile, Morocco’s King Mohammed on Friday ordered 20 new mosques built in poor areas of large cities in a move to counter radical preaching at most of the present mosques. Twelve suicide bombers who killed 33 people in Casablanca last year came from shantytowns where, a government investigation found, they had been “brainwashed” by radical clerics in makeshift mosques.
Hundreds of similar mosques have proliferated in several cities across the North African country over the past 20 years. Friday’s announcement was part of an emergency program to build “proper mosques ... to gradually eradicate the phenomenon of sites unfit for worship”, the Religious Affairs Ministry said.
The king unveiled a series of reforms to religious affairs in April aimed at restoring Islam’s image, which he said had been tarnished by “extremists” and “blind terrorism”. Construction of the new mosques will begin next year. Up to two-thirds of Morocco’s 32,000 mosques are managed by private donors, though the government officially oversees them.
In another development on Friday, a Lebanese criminal court sentenced a Moroccan to death for robbing and killing a Beirut money changer in order to buy arms for use in an attack on the US embassy here, judicial sources said. Jamal Abdel Khaleq Bazazi, 23, whose lawyer says he suffers from mental problems, may appeal the verdict.
According to the judgment, Bazazi entered Lebanon illegally, contacted the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement and said he wanted to join the jihad against Israel. But the movement wanted to turn him out of Lebanon after a four-month observation period. Bazazi fled their tutelage and, together with an Algerian friend, planned the robbery in order to buy rockets in Tripoli, a Sunni Muslim city in northern Lebanon, to attack the US Embassy. He was arrested on Sept. 10, 2002, after killing the money-changer in a northern suburb of Beirut using a pistol equipped with a silencer.
