Morocco announced on Thursday that it has arrested two militants who were planning to attack banks and multinational companies in Morocco and in France.
The Ministry of Interior said in an official statement on Monday that a Frenchman and a Franco-Moroccan arrested on Monday had also been planning to join the Islamic State group. It said they used the Internet to urge “individual terrorist acts in Morocco and France”, citing preliminary results from the investigation.
Both men had been motivated by the actions of Mohamed Merah, a French-Algerian national killed by French police in March 2012 after murdering seven people, including several children at a Jewish school.
The ministry statement said the arrested dual national had taken out several loans with French and Moroccan banks to finance their activities. It said the pair were arrested in Kenitra as they were busy rallying the ranks of ISIS.
According to the Maghreb Agency Press, the detainees, identified only by their initials, were “involved in jihadist activism” by translating and disseminating press releases and video recordings of ISIS terrorism. It also added that an “extremist of Algerian origin” was also arrested on Monday in Fez, and that he “planned to join his wife,” a Moroccan who had already joined the jihadist group in Syria.
The Moroccan Times.
