Rabat – Morocco’s Central Bureau of Judicial Investigations (BCIJ) announced on Thursday the dismantling of a three-member ISIS cell, which was plotting terror attacks to undermine the country’s security and stability.
BCIJ in cooperation with the special forces of the General Directorate for Territorial Surveillance (DGST) arrested the three suspects in separate and simultaneous operations in Souk El Arbaa, a town in the Khenifra province, Tetouan, and Larache, in northern Morocco.
According to BCIJ, security services have seized several materials at the houses of the suspects, including bladed weapons, manuscripts advocating ISIS extremism, inciting violence, as well as papers retracing ISIS activists in the Sahel region.
Police also seized digital materials and media that will be subject to the necessary technical investigations.
Preliminary data shows that the suspects, aged between 19 and 29, pledged their allegiance to ISIS and planned a series of terrorist projects before fleeing to join ISIS camps in the Sahel region.
BCIJ statement said that the suspects were held in custody to carry out further investigations to reveal the circumstances of the case and identify all possible accomplices and the arrested suspects’ plans and projects.
The arrest of the suspects comes in a “context marked by the rise of terrorist threat and the desire of global terrorist organizations and their regional subsidiaries to increase their subversive operations,” BCIJ stressed.
BCIJ is Morocco’s security unit in charge of counterterrorism operations. All of Morocco’s security units, however, team up together as part of the country’s counterterrorism efforts.
Many reports have highlighted Morocco’s vigilant approach against terror threats.
One of the latest reports was on February 27, when the US State Department Country Terrorist Report 2021, stressed the country’s continued strategy that “includes vigilant security measures, regional and international cooperation, and counter-radicalization policies.”
The report recalled that Morocco’s security services arrested at least 55 individuals linked for their alleged involvement in terrorism cells and dismantled cells in “the early stages of planning attacks.”
