Posted Sunday, March 13, 2005; 12.42 GMT
One main reason Moroccans are so prevalent in Europe's latest arrests is simple: there are about 2 million in Europe and they make up the bulk of the Arab population in Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands. Moroccan officials say that their countrymen are targeted for recruitment by al-Qaeda and affiliated groups precisely because they are so well integrated in Europe. And since 3/11, they've come under more intense scrutiny from authorities. Still, for many, the involvement of Moroccans in terrorism is a surprise. The vast majority of Moroccans abhor what the terrorists have done. After the Casablanca attacks in May 2003, in which 45 people died when suicide bombers simultaneously hit five separate sites, tens of thousands marched against terrorism. The Madrid bombings were denounced by all major Moroccan parties, including Islamic fundamentalists. King Mohammed VI, who last week paid tribute in Madrid to the victims, condemned the terrorists as "villains" who tarnished the Muslim faith.
Counterterrorism officials say that Moroccan cells in Europe are especially adept at hiding in plain sight. "They work hard at day jobs and family lives that provide total cover for clandestine activity," says a French investigator. Other hallmarks of what this source calls "the Moroccan model" include more covert recruitment to avoid detection; high, if not total, Moroccan or ethnic-Moroccan cell membership; a loose affiliation with the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (gicm), an extremist group associated with al-Qaeda; and a degree of preparedness that the French investigator warns "could allow them to turn from logistical and other activity into an operative cell almost as soon as the decision is made."
One Moroccan jihadist who underwent that transformation was Madrid bomber Jamal (El Chino) Ahmidan, one of the seven suspected 3/11 terrorists who blew themselves up in an apartment in the Madrid suburb of Leganés last April as police closed in. Ahmidan grew up in the rundown Moroccan city of Tetuán, where his father ran a clothing shop, and came illegally to Madrid in 1990 aged 19. He started dealing hashish and living the fast life of a drug-using petty criminal. But that wasn't the whole picture.
In April 2000, according to a Spanish antiterrorism official, Ahmidan was placed in a Madrid detention center for illegal aliens prior to deportation. "He set himself up as an imam and told the guards he would come back and kill them," says the official. "No one took him seriously then, but he already had quite a following." A subsequent prison stint in Morocco only increased his sense of mission. According to police sources, after spiriting himself back into Spain, Ahmidan reconnected with some of his followers and resumed his drug-peddling — but as a committed jihadist.
Police say Ahmidan was in touch with remnants of the Soldiers of Allah, an al-Qaeda-linked network set up in 1994. Police believe their initial goal was to recruit fighters for Bosnia and Chechnya, and increasingly turned to local Moroccans to use drug-dealing, credit card fraud and minor theft to finance jihad. Part of the tragedy of 3/11 is that Ahmidan, like other members of the cell, was known to police — but only as a drug dealer. The poor vigilance was partly grounded in a basic misreading of the jihadists' intent: Spanish police never believed this cell would become operative.
But Ahmidan did. In fact, authorities say he became a key operator for the 3/11 attacks. The proceeds from his hashish trade funded not only his BMW 500 and Volkswagen Golf, but also helped pay the rent on the cottage near Morata de Tajuña, 30 km southeast of Madrid, where police believe the 3/11 conspirators assembled their bombs. Spanish investigators say the 200 kg of Goma 2 Eco explosives used in the attacks were purchased with drugs and drug proceeds.
Ahmidan was also a key link to many of the other members of the cell, according to the senior Spanish antiterror official. Some of them knew him through drug-dealing, others from the streets of the poor Madrid neighborhood of Lavapiés or from the mosque. "Many of these Moroccans weren't part of the original Islamic fundamentalist tradition," says the official. But following Ahmidan's zealous lead, they embraced the fanatical jihadist doctrine of Al-Takfir wa'l-Hijra (excommunication and exile), which legitimizes the killing of all "infidels" — including fellow Muslims — as a sacred duty.
Why do some Moroccans seem primed to join extremist groups? One factor is the legacy of the late King Hassan II, who ruled from 1961 to 1999. Hassan II's repression of political opponents gave Moroccans a taste for violence, some believe, while his bankrupt education system helped produce a generation of unemployed youth ripe for poisonous thinking. To combat the antimonarchist challenge of Morocco's burgeoning homegrown Islamic movement, Hassan II encouraged the intolerant Wahhabi doctrine of Islam — exported from Saudi Arabia — in which Osama bin Laden was schooled.
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