Al Hadari's chief, Mustapha Moatassim, was among 32 people arrested in a police operation on Monday and Tuesday and accused of planning to slay top army officers, government ministers and some Moroccan Jews, the interior minister said.
"The network has a two-pronged strategy: one for political activity with al Badil al Hadari as its public face and another clandestine focusing on military action," Chakib Benmoussa told a news conference.
"The network set up a military wing named Special Action Group," he said, adding it had links with Algeria's Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which last year changed its name to al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb.
"The network developed links with terror groups abroad to give military training to its members," he added, naming al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Abdelhafid Sriti, Hezbollah's Al Manar television correspondent in Morocco, was among the 32 detained.
Benmoussa said members of the network, launched in 1992, had carried out six murders in Belgium, where its Moroccan leader, Abdelkader Belliraj, lived. The allegations of links to terrorism against Moatassim were the first leveled at a leader of a legal Islamist party.
Three other small Islamist underground groups were linked to the network, Prime Minister Abbas El Fassi's office said, as well as a group widely known as moderate, the Oumma Movement.
Oumma Movement, whose leader Mohamed Merouani was among those detained, applied for legal status as a party, but the Interior ministry dismissed its request last year.
Police discovered at least 34 weapons, including two Israeli-made UZI assault rifles, when they raided homes and offices of the suspects, Benmoussa said. |
Belgian attacks It also said a member of the network had carried out a hold-up on a Brussels subsidiary of business security firm Brink's in 2000 to steal 17.5 million euros, with the help of European gangsters.
"The heist from this hold-up enabled the network to introduce the equivalent of 30 million dirhams ($3.89 million) in 2001 to Morocco to fund its activities," it added.
Morocco's government, on alert since suicide bombings killed 45 people in Casablanca nearly five years ago, says it has broken up more than 60 cells of terror suspects since then. It has arrested more than 3,000 people in the process.
The largest Islamic opposition movement, Al Adl Wal Ihssane (Justice and Charity), is tolerated by King Mohammed's government but banned from mainstream politics because of its open hostility to the monarchy.
The moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) has 46 seats in Morocco's 325-member parliament. |
