SALÉ, Morocco: The Sahel region of Africa is a ticking “time bomb” of terrorism and organized crime, a Moroccan police chief told AFP on Friday, a day after a suspected Daesh group-affiliated cell was busted.
“It was a dangerous cell primed to go into action at any moment,” Abdelhak Khiame, head of the Central Bureau of Judicial Investigation (BCIJ), said in an interview at its offices in Sale, near Morocco’s capital Rabat.
Five “extremists,” aged between 29 and 43, were detained Thursday in simultaneous operations at sites in Tangiers and the Rabat region, said the Central Bureau of Judicial Investigations.
Explosive belts, three kilograms (6.6 pounds) of ammonium nitrate, electronic equipment and bladed weapons were seized in raids on homes and businesses of the suspects, the bureau said.
Khiame said the Daesh-affiliated group was plotting suicide attacks targeting “public personalities, military figures and the headquarters of security services” in the North African kingdom.
Three kilos (6.5 pounds) of ammonium nitrate, the chemical behind the August 4 cataclysmic Beirut blast, was also netted.
Pledges of allegiance to the Daesh were discovered. Two of the suspects put up “fierce resistance,” leaving a policeman with serious knife wounds.
The alleged head of the group, a 37-year-old fish salesman, had been convicted of a common law crime in 2004 and radicalized since.
Khiame said it was the first such large-scale bust since the 2003 Islamist suicide attacks in Casablanca, Morocco’s economic capital, that left 33 dead.
He warned that Daesh “has developed in the Sahel-Sahara region, with the conflict in Libya and in countries like Mali which do not control not their security.”
The Sahel covers western and north-central Africa.
“Terrorist cells and terrorism are growing in the region but also organized crime networks, drug trafficking, weapons and human beings,” said the BCIJ chief.
“All of this... makes the Sahel region, in my opinion, a time bomb.”
Khiame said the dismantled cell had apparently had no direct contact with the extremists of Daesh.
But “even if Daesh was defeated in the Levant, in the region of Syria and Iraq, its ideology... does not need territory, it can develop where it finds sympathizers,” he said.
Daesh-inspired “cells underground act like sleeper cells which in most cases have no relationship to each other,” he said.
Morocco warns of Sahel ‘time bomb’ after Daesh-linked cell busted
https://arab.news/ckyhf
Morocco warns of Sahel ‘time bomb’ after Daesh-linked cell busted
- “It was a dangerous cell primed to go into action at any moment,” said Abdelhak Khiame, head of the Central Bureau of Judicial Investigation (BCIJ)
- Explosive belts, three kilograms (6.6 pounds) of ammonium nitrate, electronic equipment and bladed weapons were seized in raids on homes and businesses of the suspects
Saad Hariri pledges to contest May election
- Beirut rally draws large crowds on anniversary of his father’s assassination
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced on Saturday that his movement, which represents the majority of Lebanon’s Sunni community, would take part in upcoming parliamentary elections scheduled for May.
The Future Movement had suspended its political activities in 2022.
Hariri was addressing a large gathering of Future Movement supporters as Lebanon marked the 21st anniversary of the assassination of his father and former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, at Martyrs’ Square in front of his tomb.
He said his movement remained committed to the approach of “moderation.”
A minute’s silence was observed by the crowd in Martyrs’ Square at the exact time when, in 2005, a suicide truck carrying about 1,000 kg of explosives detonated along Beirut’s seaside road as Rafik Hariri’s motorcade passed, killing him along with 21 others, including members of his security guards and civilians, and injuring 200 people.
Four members of Hezbollah were accused of carrying out the assassination and were tried in absentia by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.
The crowd waved Lebanese flags and banners of the Future Movement as they awaited Saad Hariri, who had returned to Beirut from the UAE, where he resides, specifically to commemorate the anniversary, as has been an annual tradition.
Hariri said that “after 21 years, the supporters of Hariri’s approach are still many,” denouncing the “rumors and intimidation” directed at him.
He added: “Moderation is not hesitation … and patience is not weakness. Rafik Hariri’s project is not a dream that will fade. He was the model of a statesman who believed, until martyrdom, that ‘no one is greater than their country.’ The proof is his enduring place in the minds, hearts and consciences of the Lebanese people.”
Hariri said he chose to withdraw from political life after “it became required that we cover up failure and compromise the state, so we said no and chose to step aside — because politics at the expense of the country’s dignity and the project of the state has no meaning.”
He said: “The Lebanese are weary, and after years of wars, divisions, alignments and armed bastions, they deserve a normal country with one constitution, one army, and one legitimate authority over weapons — because Lebanon is one and will remain one. Notions of division have collapsed in the face of reality, history and geography, and the illusions of annexation and hegemony have fallen with those who pursued them, who ultimately fled.”
Hariri said the Future Movement’s project is “One Lebanon, Lebanon first — a Lebanon that will neither slide back into sectarian strife or internal fighting, nor be allowed to do so.”
He added that the Taif Agreement is “the solution and must be implemented in full,” arguing that “political factions have treated it selectively by demanding only what suits them — leaving the agreement unfulfilled and the country’s crises unresolved.”
He said: “When we call for the full implementation of the Taif Agreement, we mean: weapons exclusively in the hands of the state, administrative decentralization, the abolition of political sectarianism, the establishment of a senate and full implementation of the truce agreement. All of this must be implemented — fully and immediately — so we can overcome our chronic problems and crises together.
“Harirism will continue to support any Arab rapprochement, and reject any Arab discord. Those who seek to sow discord between the Gulf and Arab countries will harm only themselves and their reputation.
“We want to maintain the best possible relations with all Arab countries, starting with our closest neighbor, Syria — the new Syria, the free Syria that has rid itself of the criminal and tyrannical regime that devastated it and Lebanon, and spread its poison in the Arab world.”
Hariri said he saluted “the efforts of unification, stabilization and reconstruction led by Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa.”
When asked about the Future Movement’s participation in parliamentary elections following his withdrawal from politics, he said: “Tell me when parliamentary elections will be held, and I will tell you what the Future Movement will do. I promise you that, when the elections take place, they will hear our voices, and they will count our votes.”
The US Embassy in Lebanon shared a post announcing that Ambassador Michel Issa laid a wreath at the grave of Rafik Hariri.
Hariri’s legacy “to forge peace and prosperity continues to resonate years later with renewed significance,” the embassy said.
