Lax security management favored development of extremist groups

Moroccan interior minister, Al Mostafa Sahel, said the lax management of security services before 1999 favored the development of small extremist groups, who imported from Afghanistan an extremist religious trend.

The Salafia Jihadia (a Moroccan underground extremist group) emerged in Morocco "with the return of some Moroccans who fought in Afghanistan in the eighties. They have imported an extremist religious trend that wants to impose a rigorist and retrograde Islam, because they interpret erroneously religious commandments," Sahel told the Spanish daily "El Pais" in an interview published Monday.

This trend, thus, was not generated spontaneously. There was rather "a long maturation process that we witnessed without reacting," he explained.

"Unfortunately, until 1999, the laxist management of security services that were then directly under the interior ministry allowed the small groups to develop," he deplored.

"We had to start it all over. It was also necessary to carry out an in-depth reform of the religious landscape so as to weaken deeply the influence Salafia Jihadia."

On persons arrested and tried in Morocco in connection with terrorism, the minister said in the framework of the Casablanca attacks (that killed 45 and made over 100 injured May 16, 2003), there were only 80 arrests, including those of kamikazes who could not blow their loads. There are also individuals who were readying to attack in other Moroccan cities."

One year earlier, after the dismantling of the Al-Qaida dormant cell, an operation was launched to spot potential terrorism sanctuaries. They are small criminal groups that robbed, assassinated and blackmailed in the name of Islam, he explained.

Finally, there were other arrests under the new anti-terrorism law, enacted last year, Sahel said, adding that some 12 terrorists are still on the run, and some 30 others moving abroad.

We have launched international warrants to have them arrested because they are involved in the Casablanca bombings. For those who remained, it is impossible, in any country, to estimate the number of potential terrorists, he insisted, adding that the Moroccans who are part of the Al-Qaida network occupy only low positions.