Morocco holds 11 over planned attacks: report
RABAT, Morocco (AFP) — Moroccan police have broken up a "terrorist network" of 11 people with links to Al-Qaeda that was planning attacks in Morocco and Belgium, the MAP national news agency said Monday.
The 11, who include a Moroccan resident in Belgium, were picked up in the central city of Fes and in Nador, in the north of the country, MAP said.
They had links with "groups sending volunteers to Iraq and camps of Al-Qaeda's branch in North Africa," the agency added, giving no names.
A source close to the government told AFP that the 11 were not connected to another group arrested earlier this year allegedly led by Abdelkader Belliraj, who has dual Moroccan and Belgian nationality.
That group faces charges including murder and attempted murder with firearms, robbery, money laundering, criminal association with terrorist intent and forging official and identity documents.
Belliraj is also reported to have been in the pay of Belgium's domestic intelligence service for years, but Moroccan authorities said he had confessed to several unsolved murders committed in Belgium in 1989.
Belgian radio station VRT in Brussels reported Monday evening that the Moroccan suspects that day had targeted a European Union building and a hotel in the Belgian capital, without citing its sources.
The Belgian federal prosecutor in charge of investigating terrorist threats was not immediately available to comment on the report, but a spokeswoman said Moroccan authorities did not tell Belgium of their investigation before Monday's announcement.
Several cells recruiting fighters for missions to Iraq and Afghanistan have been broken up in Belgium since 2001, but the country -- home to headquarters of international bodies including NATO -- has not yet been struck by attacks.
