DUBAI, 4 November 2005 — Al-Qaeda in Iraq said yesterday it had put on trial two Moroccan Embassy employees it was holding and sentenced them to death because of their country’s support for the US-backed Baghdad government. In Rabat, Morocco’s Foreign Ministry denounced the statement, posted on the Internet, as “barbarous” and “contrary to Islam’s precepts and the fundamental values of humanity.”
The Al-Qaeda group said on Tuesday it would put the two Moroccans, driver Abderrahim Boualam and assistant Abdelkrim El Mouhafidim, on trial. The two were seized late last month. “The legislative authority of Al-Qaeda organization in Iraq has ruled to kill them,” the group said yesterday.
“After the court looked into the detainees’ case, it was proven, without any doubt, that they are followers of the despots (US) and infidel Moroccan government.
“They added to their heresy and their war on Islam by allying themselves with the outcast government in Baghdad, and this has been confirmed by their confessions.” The group has warned Arab and Muslim governments against sending envoys to Baghdad. The statement could not be verified, but it was posted on an Islamist website often used by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi’s group. It was not clear when the killings would be carried out.
The men’s relatives, Moroccan politicians and newspapers have begged the group to spare their lives ahead of the Eid Al-Fitr to be celebrated today in Morocco.
“I beg our mujahedeen brothers in Iraq, who are Muslims by the Islamic law and justice they live by, to release my husband and his friend. They haven’t done anything. I am Iraqi,” El Mouhafidim’s blind and pregnant wife Liqaa Abbas Mirza told Al Jazeera by telephone from Baghdad before breaking off in tears.
The Moroccan Foreign Ministry said in a statement: “Unfortunately, and despite many calls in the country, the Al-Qaeda Iraqi branch has apparently opted for the supreme barbarity that nothing would explain or even justify.”
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council is considering a US draft resolution that would extend through the end of next year the mandate of the American-led multinational force in Iraq. The draft, circulated in the council Wednesday, followed an extension request made by Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari on Tuesday. There was no word on when the text would be put to a potential vote.
