Morocco busts Daesh cell; 11 arrested

RABAT: Moroccan police on Saturday arrested 11 members of an “extremely dangerous terrorist” cell linked to Daesh and seized chemical products used to make bombs, the Interior Ministry said.

The suspects were active in the neighboring northern cities of Fez and Meknes, in commercial capital Casablanca, as well as in the central town of Khouribga, a statement said.

The ministry said the “extremely dangerous terrorist” cell had planned to carry out attacks in “sensitive areas... in coordination with an affiliate” of Daesh.

Moroccan media broadcast live video footage showing heavily armed and masked members of an elite police unit surrounding a building in Fez.

The ministry said the unit searched an apartment and arrested the “suspected mastermind of the cell and one of his accomplices.”

Police also seized firearms, knives, gas canisters as well as “products used to make homemade bombs” and a car carrying “suspicious material” that was parked near the building, the ministry added.

Morocco has been spared deadly terrorist attacks since a 2011 bombing in Marrakesh’s famed Jamaa El Fna Square that killed 17 people, mainly European tourists.

But in recent months, authorities have regularly announced the dismantling of Daesh cells and arrests of suspected recruiters.

In an interview with the Associated Press recently published by the Washington Post, Abdelhak El-Khiam, head of the Moroccan Anti-terrorism Bureau, said that uprooting terrorism and radical ideology cannot be achieved by security measures alone. For this reason, Morocco has sought to tackle the sources of radicalism by launching programs to eradicate poverty and to train imams with the aim of spreading a moderate discourse to counter extremist messages.