Posted on 09/05/2003 3:54:07 PM PDT by blam
Teen girls held for Morocco 'plot'
By Pascale Harter
BBC, Rabat
Police in Morocco have said that they have detained three teenage girls, including twin sisters, suspected of planning a suicide attack on a supermarket in the capital, Rabat.
Police have been on alert since the Casablanca bombings in May
They say they have uncovered a cell of a radical Islamic group which was planning to attack targets in the capital, Rabat.
According to the police, they have arrested eight more suspected members of the Salafia Jihadia cell and are carrying out a manhunt for 17 more.
So far Rabat has escaped attacks by the radical Islamic organisation which blew up Western and Jewish targets in the commercial city of Casablanca in May killing 45 people.
But with this discovery, the capital is once again on high alert.
Alert
According to police the group planned to carry out suicide attacks on a parliament building, a supermarket in a prosperous neighbourhood of Rabat and against several high profile personalities.
The Ministry of Justice is conducting an investigation into the cell.
The ministry says that police were first alerted to the existence of a Rabat-based terrorist group through the statements of the two teenage girls.
The girls, twin sisters aged 13 and a third aged 14, are the youngest suspects to be arrested in Morocco under a new anti-terrorism law.
Police say that one of the sisters said she had planned to blow herself up in the alcohol section of the supermarket before she was arrested.?
According to the police the girls had contacted a local Imam, an Islamic preacher, asking if their action were in accordance with Islam.
Inquiry
The police have not revealed whether it was the Imam who first informed them of the girls' plan and the possibility that a Salafia Jihadia cell was at work in Rabat.
The sisters were expected to appear before a judge on Friday in order to help with the inquiry into the Rabat terror cell.
But the Justice Ministry says that later they will face trial themselves.
Some analysts have expressed scepticism at this latest wave of arrests, saying that they provide a convenient way of emphasising the threat of radical Islamists, ahead of elections in a few days time, in which just one Islamic party will stand.
A spokesperson for the Moroccan Association of Human Rights says that the association is trying to establish what charges would be brought against the girls and what evidence the police have to support their claims.
"... yes, it's Mary-Kate and Ashley as you've never seen them before, in the hysterical new Disney DVD release: "The Burqa Trap!" :)
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