Rabat – Judiciary police in the city of Meknes, 65 kilometers west of Fez, have arrested eight students in possession of weapons who were allegedly planning criminal acts.
The arrests took place on Thursday, December 26, according to a press release from the General Directorate of National Security (DGSN).
The suspects were part of a student faction. Police arrested them in a rented room in the Zitoune neighborhood, central Meknes.
Authorities seized 13 machetes, five knives, an axe, four iron chains, and 12 wooden poles. The police has also seized a car and several pairs of gloves and balaclavas.
The group of students came from Fez and were planning physical aggressions against students from an opposing faction, concluded the investigations.
Database checks revealed that three of the arrested suspects were already subject to a national arrest warrant for armed gatherings and violence against officials on duty, notes the DGSN statement.
Police have taken all suspects into custody to continue investigations.
Several Moroccan universities are the sites of occasional clashes between students with differing political and ideological affiliations, with confrontations sometimes turning violent.
In 2014, clashes between two opposite factions in the Fez-Dher Mehrez university campus killed one student, Abderrahim El Hasnaoui, and severely injured two others.
More recently, in 2016, a student called Omar Elkhaleq was seriously injured in clashes between two student factions at the Cadi Ayyad university campus in Marrakech. He later succumbed to his injuries at the Ibn Tofail university hospital.
