MOROCCO: A Moroccan court sentenced four men to death yesterday for their role in bomb attacks in Casablanca three months ago that killed 45 people, including 12 suicide bombers.
The government blamed a clandestine, ultra-conservative Islamist movement, the Salafist Jihad, and said some of its members had indirect links to al-Qaeda.
The four were found guilty of having planned the simultaneous bombings on the night of May 16th against a Spanish restaurant, a five-star hotel and a Jewish community centre.
Two of those sentenced to death, Mohamed Omari (23) and Rachid Jalil (27), admitted they were the only survivors from the 14-member suicide bombing squad which set off in taxis from the shanty-town of Sidim Moumen on the outskirts of Casablanca with home-made explosives stuffed into backpacks.
Yassine Lahnech (22), a street vendor, was accused of having indoctrinated recruits to the group, and Hassan Taoussi of being an active member.
The bombings shocked Morocco, a pro-Western country and close US ally that had long prided itself on being an oasis of stability in the Arab world.
It was unclear if the death sentences would be carried out.
Judicial sources said it could take one year, or one month, for a decision to be made.
"It all depends on how swiftly the state, and the king, want this to go," one lawyer said. "Only King Mohammed has the power to commute death sentences."
There were until yesterday 152 people on death row in Morocco, including 10 Islamic extremists arrested before the Casablanca bombings and sentenced in July for a series of murders. But capital punishment has only been put into practice once in the country in the last 20 years.
Moroccan investigators regard the Salafist Jihad as a loosely structured network of enthusiasts grouped into neighbourhood-based cells, with prayer meetings as a main recruitment method.
No clear evidence was brought before the Casablanca court as to organisational links with groups outside Morocco, including al-Qaeda. But there was plenty of evidence of ideological links.
With the suicide bombers all coming from a teeming shanty town of shacks with no running water and where poverty and crime are rampant, the attacks also prompted much soul-searching in the media on issues such as unemployment and education.
The four were among 87 defendants in the most important trial of several across the country of more than 600 suspected Islamic militants facing charges of terrorism-related activities.
After the sentences were read, most of the defendants shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest), with some standing on benches within their glassed-in enclosure in the courtroom, waving their fists in the air.
Political analyst Mr Khalid Jamai said that if the four were executed, "they will become martyrs in the eyes of many".
Prosecutors said some of the defendants had been primed to carry out other attacks at tourist sites in the towns of Marrakesh, Agadir and Essaouira, as part of a violent Jihad, or holy struggle, against Western, Jewish and US interests.