Morocco detains 27 Al Qaeda suspects

RABAT - Moroccan security forces have dismantled a 27-member Al Qaeda terrorist cell in the disputed territory of Western Sahara, government sources said Wednesday.

The sources confirmed the number of detainees as 27 and not 37, as had initially been reported.

The cell included a member of the North African branch of Al Qaeda, who had been “dispatched to set up a rear base” in Morocco, according to a statement issued by the Moroccan interior ministry late Tuesday.

Security forces discovered three arms caches near Amgala in Western Sahara, a territory annexed by Morocco after the colonial power Spain withdrew from there in 1975. The independence movement Polisario Front is seeking a referendum on the independence of Western Sahara.

Amgala is located east of a Moroccan defensive wall in a part of Western Sahara which Polisario regards as being under its control, while Rabat describes it as a buffer zone.

The cell members, supervised by a Moroccan based in Al Qaeda camps in northern Mali, were plotting attacks using bomb belts and car bombs, according to the communique.

The attacks would have targeted security forces in particular, the ministry said. They would have been carried out by suspects trained by Al Qaeda in Algeria and Mali.

The cell was also planning bank robberies in order to obtain funds, the interior ministry said.

The swoop was the second one against alleged Al Qaeda activists in Western Sahara since early November, when four people were detained.

Al Qaeda activists operating in the region are believed to have links with drug traffickers in neighbouring Mauritania. Latin American drug traffickers smuggle cocaine through West Africa to the European market.