Observations on Morocco

Morocco only narrowly escaped major terrorist attacks this month, a Moroccan terrorism expert has told the New Statesman. The events were potentially as serious as the Casablanca bombings in May 2003, in which 33 civilians and 12 suicide bombers died.

The latest attacks have raised fears of another wave of terrorism in a country that has been an important regional ally of the west. They were planned for Sunday 11 March, but failed when one of two bombers blew himself up at an internet café, killing only himself.

In the following days, details of a larger plan emerged. The next Wednesday, police discovered almost 200kg of explosives and raw materials at a house in Moulay Rachid, a deprived suburb of Casablanca. Eyewitnesses saw the police carrying cases with materials and large plastic bottles out of the house. The street had been evacuated the previous evening, according to Mohamed Khalifi, a neighbour. The owner of the house, Ouadnani Mahjoubi, had rented a room two weeks earlier to three young men.

"They were 20 to 24 years old and said they were working at a market in another suburb. They disappeared Sunday evening," she told the media.

The state press agency, Maghreb Arabe Presse, reported that police now believe two of the men planned to detonate bombs that evening somewhere in Casablanca. They visited an internet café to look for instructions on a jihadi website. Eyewitnesses say one of the two, Abdelfattah Raydi, aged 23, became irate and started to bang the keyboard because he couldn't find the information. When the son of the café owner threatened to call the police, Raydi blew himself up. No one else was killed. His companion Youssef Khoudri, aged 18, had been waiting outside and, at that point, dropped his own bomb belt and ran off. He was captured a few hours later.

The police already knew of Raydi. In 2003, he was sentenced to five years for involvement in that year's bombings, but was freed under royal pardon in 2005.

The Moroccan terrorism expert Mohammed Darif told me: "The two constituted one of many cells. The explosives must have been made somewhere else. The room they rented - no more than a shed - was too small to do that."

The Sunday of the planned explosions was exactly three years after the Madrid train bombings, in which 191 people were killed.

Darif, a professor at Hassan II University in Mohammedia, has been following Islamist groups for years. "There is a link between those two men and the capture of Saad Houssaini the week before in Casablanca," he told me. Houssaini is regarded as chief of the military wing of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM), which is suspected of involvement in the Madrid and Casablanca bombings.

Darif believes that, with this attack, al-Qaeda intended to show it could operate in Morocco as well as Algeria. The GICM is part of the "al-Qaeda Organisation in Islamic Maghreb", which used al-Jazeera television to announce its existence in January this year.

Local reports have suggested the likely targets in Casablanca were police and paramilitary buildings and tourist hotels and restaurants. So far, the police have arrested 18 people and say they are seeking six more they believe to have links with the two bombers.

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