Thank you Oorang.
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=morocco
Note: The following text is a quote.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1778204/posts
Morocco jails Islamists for Qaeda ties, attack plans
reuters ^ | Feb. 2,2007 | reuters
Posted on 02/02/2007 12:34:43 PM PST by mdittmar
A Moroccan court on Friday jailed eight Islamists for up to 10 years for plotting attacks and belonging to the al Qaeda network, court officials and lawyers said.
The court in Sale, a twin city to Rabat, convicted Ben Moujane Mohamed for "belonging to al Qaeda and preparing terrorist attacks".
Mohamed, who was captured in 2002 by the U.S. military in Afghanistan and jailed at Guantanamo Bay prison, was handed over to Morocco early last year.
He was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Friday, Sale court officials and lawyers said.
The court, in a separate case, condemned six Islamists to between one and 10 years for plotting attacks and attempting to get military training with al Qaeda-linked guerrillas in Algeria. Algerian authorities seized the six men early in 2006 before they joined the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) which led an insurgency in Algeria.
Last month, the GSPC adopted the name Al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, saying it had the approval of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden for the change.
In another case, Islamist Anouar Majrar was jailed for seven years for "preparing terrorist attacks with the aim of undermining public order".
Majrar had worked in France as a waiter before returning home in 2005.
Morocco has been on alert since 2003 when suicide bombings killed 45 people in Casablanca.
The authorities said police had arrested more than 3,000 people since and broken up more than 80 cells.
Posted on 02/02/2007 8:59:28 AM PST by Mount Athos
A St. Charles man obtained fully automatic weapons and tried to buy as many explosives as possible in preparation for what an associate called "war," the FBI says in court documents. He bought three rifles and a Claymore anti-personnel mine and negotiated for a case of hand grenades, documents obtained by the Post-Dispatch show.
Mousa M. Abuelawi, 22, of Franjoe Court, was arrested Dec. 29 and charged on complaints accusing him of three counts of illegal possession or distribution of a machine gun and conspiracy to violate machine gun statutes.
Abuelawi, a Palestinian immigrant free on $50,000 bond, could not be reached. His brother declined to comment on his behalf. His lawyers, Scott Rosenblum and Gil Sison, did not return calls.
The context of the word "war" was not explained in court filings; the FBI declined to comment. The man to whom the word was attributed, Thaer Abde Sumad, said in an interview Thursday that the purchases were not intended for terrorism but to make money supplying street gangs in a St. Louis turf war.
Sumad, 23, is not charged, although he is identified in an FBI affidavit as being present for one of the transactions. He told a reporter he had no role in handling the firearms or explosives. He said he was at a meeting between Abuelawi and a federal informer outside a St. Louis gas station where Sumad works only because he knows both and wanted to say hello.
Sumad suggested that he and Abuelawi attracted special attention because of the sound of their names and their Arab ethnicity. Abuelawi's lawyers have said he is a Palestinian immigrant. Sumad is of Palestinian descent but was born in Indiana and raised in St. Louis, he said.