Moroccan Terror Suspect Arrested In Spain’s Ceuta

Spanish security services on Monday (September 16th) arrested a Moroccan expatriate for allegedly recruiting jihadists to fight in Syria.

Just a few days after the arrest of Mohamed El Bali, a Moroccan expatriate accused of co-ordinating the “Muwahideen” and “Attawhid” cells, another Moroccan terror suspect was arrested in Ceuta.

Yassin Ahmed Laarbi (aka “Pistu”), who has Spanish nationality but is Moroccan by birth, “is the suspected brains behind a network which is actively radicalising, recruiting and sending out Mujahideen to help terrorist groups at work in Syria”, Spanish authorities announced.

“Pistu”, the 39-year-old alleged cell ringleader, is accused of overseeing the training of both Moroccan and Spanish recruits in Ceuta.

Just like El Bali, who lived in Melilla, Pistu’s town of Ceuta is a Spanish enclave.

Eight members of his alleged cell were arrested last June in Ceuta and the nearby Moroccan town of Fnideq.

The men were part of an international network “dedicated to radicalising, recruiting and sending jihadists to Syria to wage jihad and become martyrs”, a Madrid court said at their arraignment.

The cell reportedly sent an estimated 50 jihadists – most of them from Morocco – to Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria. According to Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz, some of the foreign fighters were responsible for suicide attacks.

The network asked them to act as “lone wolves” if they returned to Spain or Morocco, to lead Jihadist attacks in France or the United Kingdom, the minister added.

Melilla, Ceuta and the north of Morocco in recent years have seen a big breakthrough for radical Salafist thinking, becoming over time a real stronghold for demagogues and theologians serving the agendas of various terrorist networks,” analyst Salem Benmamoun told Magharebia.

Hicham Baâli of the General Directorate of National Security said AQIM relied heavily on the internet to reach the largest possible number of young people, “but efforts have been made at the technological level to identify young Moroccans liable to get involved in jihad”.

Expert Moussa Al Mouritani told Magharebia that terrorist networks affiliated with AQIM draw much of their strength from the weak security co-operation between the countries of the Maghreb.

“The Sahel continues to be home to various armed terrorist movements who travel freely from the Mauritanian-Malian border to the Sinai, in Egypt, passing through Libya, but also from the Mauritanian-Malian border zone across to Somalia with al-Shabab al-Mujahideen, and along Nigeria where Boko Haram remains active.”

In his view, economic development in the region is essential “because terrorism is also fuelled by poverty and unemployment among the youth”.

Indeed, Moroccan Foreign Minister Saadeddine El Othmani told Maghreb foreign ministers in Algeria this year that there was a need for UMA member nations to improve security, police and judicial co-operation.

“It’s high time for the countries of the Maghreb to adopt a firm strategy and a common vision in the face of the threat of terrorism,” Moroccan journalist Lahcen Laâbissi agreed in a September 11th television interview.