Morocco spells death to 4 for Casablanca bombing

A crying woman holding her child, relative of a defendant in the trial of the May 16 suicide bombings in Casablanca, stands amongst other relatives on Monday in front of the justice hall in Casablanca. A criminal court there awarded death sentence to four suspects who had reiterated their denials of involvement in the attacks that killed 45 people, including 12 of the bombers. Photo: AFP

The judges found the four guilty of premeditated murder in the five simultaneous attacks on May 16 in which 45 people were killed, including 12 suicide bombers on May 16.

Two of those sentenced to death, Mohamed Omari and Rachid Jalil, were among the 14-member suicide team, but who survived.

Tap Here to Add The Daily Star As A Trusted Source

The four were among 87 defendants the public prosecutor at the trial accused of belonging to a shadowy, ultra-conservative Islamist movement, the Salafist Jihad, which advocates violence against US interests and Jews in Morocco and also against Muslim Moroccans it finds insufficiently observant.

Morocco has only carried out the death sentence once in the last 20 years, when a police commissioner was executed in 1993 for a three-year orgy of rape and sexual violence.

Of the other defendants facing various charges including criminal conspiracy and undermining the security of the state, 39 received life sentences, 15 sentences of 30 years and 15 of 20 years, nine of 10 years, two of eight years, one of six years, and two of 10 months.

In a pause after the sentences were announced, most of the defendants started shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest), with some standing on benches within their glassed-in enclosure in the courtroom waving their fists in the air.

Police moved in and swiftly hustled them from the court.

The defendants included a mosque preacher who received life imprisonment, and three other preachers sentenced to 30 years each.

Many of the defendants protested their innocence and said they were patriotic citizens opposed to violence.

The public prosecutor had argued in court they were all adherents of the Salafist Jihad.

Prosecutors said some of the defendants had been primed to carry out subsequent attacks at places frequented by tourists in the towns of Marrakesh, Agadir and Essaouira, as part of a violent Jihad, or holy struggle, against Western, Jewish and US interests.

The lawyer for one of the preachers, Mohamed Fizazi, said he would appeal his 30-year sentence.

Fizazi, a well-known preacher from Tangiers in northern Morocco, said in a rhetorical address to the judges that he was a patriot who had never excommunicated fellow Muslims.

He said he opposed "the crimes of Casablanca" as did all Muslims and all humankind, and they must not be repeated.