Posted on 09/10/2003 9:33:47 AM PDT by knighthawk
RABAT: An alleged accomplice of Frenchman Pierre Robert, on trial here on charges of leading a Muslim cell involved in suicide bombings in Casablanca, admitted in a court hearing overnight Monday that he received and hid a cache of chemical weapons in the country in the 1980s.
Mohammed Neggaoui also told Rabat’s criminal court that he had met Robert three times at the home of another suspect in the northern city of Tangiers.
He denied, however that they had discussed terrorist projects in Morocco.
Robert and his 33 co-accused are charged with criminal conspiracy, conspiracy to undermine state security, premeditated murder and possession of arms and explosives in connection with the Casablanca attacks.
On May 16, booby-trapped cars exploded outside an international hotel, a Jewish cultural center and an Italian restaurant, and suicide bombers detonated their bombs at a Spanish club and a Jewish cemetery, all in downtown Casablanca.
Forty-one people died instantly, including 12 presumed suicide bombers. Four more people died of their injuries in the days and weeks that followed.
Robert testified Monday that he has worked for French intelligence in the past five years, telling the same court that he had infiltrated Muslim extremist groups and spied on them for the French intelligence services, the DST.
In Paris a French Interior Ministry official on Monday denied Robert’s assertion, saying the ministry had “never had contact with this person.”
Neggaoui, turning back to the 1980s, said he was given chemical weapons by members of the Islamist Mujahedeen movement in Morocco.
Asked by the presiding judge about the planned use of the weapons, which were hidden in several towns, Neggaoui said that at the time “there was no democracy nor human rights” and that “the arms could be useful in the event of a civil war.”
“If our goal had been to assassinate political figures, we would have been doing it since 1984,” when the movement was created, Neggaoui added.
Seperately, Morocco’s justice minister said that despite arresting hundreds of people following the string of suicide bombings, his country may apply the death penalty to counter the menace of Islamic militants.
Mohammed Bouzoubaa told the French daily Le Parisien that 906 people have been arrested since the May 16 bombings. But other suspected members of militant Islamic networks remain at large, “so the fundamentalist threat is still there,” Le Parisien quoted him as saying.
Asked whether Morocco, which has not executed anyone since the early 1990s, would carry out death sentences already handed down, Bouzoubaa replied: “Possibly … The action carried out was very serious.”
Bouzoubaa said that Robert had been very cooperative, providing authorities with the names that led to further arrests, leading investigators to a training ground used by his alleged militant associates, and providing information that enabled police to seize illegal weapons.
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