When the information came to light, an urgent meeting was convened at the Interior Ministry on August 28, attended by various ministry chiefs, Army and other security departments, as well as airport and RAM directors, to asses the security apparatus installed in the airports around the country.
The meeting decided to improve the security system in order to secure the protection of passengers, airplanes and airports.
The government announced in early August that it had busted the previously unknown Jammaat Ansar El Mehdi (El Mehdi Support Group) cell, arresting over 40 group members and seizing explosives, propaganda material and laboratory equipment.
It said the group was planning to declare a holy war in the northeast of the country, attack tourist sites and assassinate people who symbolise the state.
The authorities say they have dismantled more than 50 militant cells with more than 2,000 members since May 2003, when the normally peaceful country was shaken by a series of bombings in the economic capital Casablanca that killed 45 people.
The government said the Ansar El Mehdi cell had set up local branches in several Moroccan towns, recruited military personnel able to handle explosives and planned to fund its holy war with bank robberies, hold-ups of money transport convoys and forged bank notes.
Tags: Morocco Fes, Maghreb news
4 comments:
I feel sick.
It is worrying, Keep up the great blog Cat - and vist Fes sometime.
I'm very glad to hear that the Moroccan government seems to be taking security much more seriously.
But I fear that your title "Moroccan Pilots' Wives Fund Terror Cell" is more sensational than it needs to be. The title of the original article in Reuters is
"Morocco Raises Airport Security on Militant Threat", which seems more objective. It's true that husbands and wives in countries all over the world are supporting terrorism, but many people in the West have the idea, because of the media, that terrorism is more of a problem in Morocco than elsewhere, which is not the case. Headlines are very powerful emotional tools (since many people don't read the text of the article), and when people read headlines like this they often decide not to come to Morocco this year, even though Morocco is much safer than London, New York, Paris, etc etc. And because the people of Morocco depend so much on the income from tourism for survival, journalists have a moral responsibility to avoid the "If it bleeds, it leads" approach.
Interesting comment David, but our headline is very mild compared to most and we have posted a swag of stories over the last year pointing out how well Morocco is handling the issue. This is a huge story here and we have taken a very measured approach.
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