Relations between the two allies soured but their recent reconciliation has serious implications for Morocco’s neighbours, especially the Sahrawis
Kevin Davie reflects on a recent conference in Rabat held to explore the potential of a re-energised Atlantic Basin.
A Moroccan-born Belgian national suspected of running an extremist group has appealed a life sentence handed down by Morocco’s anti-terrorism court.
A new party loyal to Morocco’s King Mohammed plans to step up opposition to the country’s coalition government after local elections on Friday.
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/ 27 February 2009
A Moroccan court convicted 18 people over a series of coordinated suicide bomb attacks in Casablanca six years ago that left 45 dead.
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/ 9 September 2008
A blogger who accused Morocco’s monarchy of encouraging a culture of dependency where loyalty is rewarded with favours has been jailed.
Anger over poverty is simmering in Morocco, where popular protests against the high cost of living and unemployment occur regularly.
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/ 17 January 2008
Fourteen people were killed and 26 injured when an apartment block being built in Morocco collapsed, the MAP news agency reported on Thursday, saying rescue workers were still at the scene a day later. The accident happened on Wednesday morning in Kenitra when about 30 building workers were on the site of the two-storey housing and shopping centre, MAP said.
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/ 16 January 2008
A Moroccan appeals court has upheld prison sentences for six men jailed for ”homosexuality”, lawyer Mohamed Sebbar said on Wednesday. The decision prompted Amnesty International to call for Morocco to decriminalise homosexuality — which carries a maximum three-year sentence.
It may be a far cry from the millions of blogs active in the West, but Morocco’s blogosphere has taken off as the liveliest free-speech zone in largely conservative Muslim North Africa. The Moroccan "Blogoma", as it is called, is home to at least 30 000 sites.
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/ 10 December 2007
More than 50 people were missing after an immigrant boat sank off Morocco over the weekend, authorities said on Monday. Officials in the town of Dakhla, on the coast off the Western Sahara, said the boat was heading for the Spanish Canary Islands from Mauritania when it sank on Saturday 28 nautical miles (more than 50km) offshore.
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/ 11 November 2007
Draft Moroccan legislation has earmarked nearly 30% of the state’s 2008 budget for security, underscoring anti-terrorism concerns after spring suicide attacks, a government source said on Saturday. The state is expected to pour about 45-billion dirhams (,8-billion) into security, a 29% boost from 2007.
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/ 10 October 2007
In his Saharan robes the tanned Frenchman passed unnoticed in Nouadhibou, a chaotic Mauritanian fishing port with an iron ore terminal and a lucrative second line in drug and people smuggling. Those he befriended knew Dominique Christian Mollard as an undercover worker with a non-governmental organisation.
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/ 26 September 2007
Moroccan Sidi Kaddour Maksouri (123) is the world’s oldest living man, the newspaper al-Ahdate al-Maghribia reported on Wednesday, challenging the Guinness World Records book’s presentation of 112-year-old Japanese Tomoji Tanabe as the world’s oldest male.
The South African wheelchair basketball team are on the brink of qualifying for the Paralympic Games in Beijing after advancing to the final of the qualifier on Saturday. Team Sasol beat Egypt 71-53 in their semifinal at the Omnisports Stadium in Rabat and will now clash with Morocco for the one Africa spot at the Paralympics.
The European Union has warned Morocco of the ”almost certain probability” of terrorist attacks in the North African country and urged more security at Western embassies and tourism sites, a newspaper said on Monday. On Friday, Morocco raised the security alert level to the highest rating of ”maximum”, suggesting a terror strike was imminent.
Morocco, which has slashed cannabis cultivation by nearly half over the past four years, hopes to eradicate the main remaining area of cultivation in the northern Rif mountains by opening up the region and introducing substitute crops. The eradication programme encourages farmers to switch to other crops.
Morocco is facing an ”extreme” threat of more terror attacks in Casablanca and other cities following a spate of suicide bombings, a government spokesperson said on Wednesday. ”Terrorism can strike any time,” said spokesperson and Communications Minister Nabil Benbdellah.
For a long time, Moroccans felt relatively safe from the Islamist terrorism plaguing neighbouring Algeria, but that sense of security is now definitively gone. A recent string of suicide bombings and arrests has exposed the vulnerability of the kingdom in a region where al-Qaeda is extending its reach.
Driss Chraibi, a major figure in Moroccan literature who wrote of Islam, colonialism and the treatment of women in his homeland, has died, Morocco’s state news agency reported. He was 80. Chraibi died on April 1 in south-west France, the MAP agency reported.
Morocco said on Monday it was investigating whether an overnight blast was a militant suicide attack after a man with explosives under his clothes was blown up and three others were wounded at a Casablanca internet cafe. The Sunday night blast occurred in the commercial capital’s Sidi Moumen slum, home to 13 suicide bombers who killed 32 people in Casablanca in 2003.
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/ 15 February 2007
A deadly and carefully planned series of bomb attacks in Algeria by an al-Qaeda affiliate may signal a new escalation in violence that many Algerians hoped had abated, experts say. Tuesday’s bombings flew in the face of the government’s bid to turn the page on a bloody Islamic insurgency that tore the nation apart in the 1990s.
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/ 10 February 2007
The families of 17 people suspected of stealing royal china in Morocco will ask King Mohammed VI to step in and halt their prosecution, a lawyer in the case said on Friday. ”They know the monarch’s mercy towards his subjects,” said Me Abdelatif Wahabi, a defence lawyer in the case.
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/ 7 February 2007
Morocco’s multibillion-dollar cannabis crop, the biggest in the world, has shrunk by almost half over three years due to a government eradication campaign and drought. But the next step — convincing farmers in the poor northern Rif region to seek other livelihoods — needs heavy support from the European Union.
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/ 27 November 2006
Moroccans are currently engaged in a debate about the possibility of reducing the constitutional powers of their king — this after a collective of NGOs issued an appeal titled For a New Constitution That Works. The appeal also speaks of the need for Parliament to be able to investigate and control the executive.
The bodies of 28 illegal sub-Saharan migrants who had tried to reach the Canary Islands washed up on a beach in Western Sahara on Tuesday, Moroccan state news agency MAP reported. The migrants, who had set off from the Moroccan coast in two boats, were discovered in Blibilatte, 40km north of the territory’s chief city Laayoune.
When a fellow Moroccan asked Mohamed to drive him from Bilbao, Spain to Barcelona, Mohamed was happy to oblige. Two months later Mohamed was awakened by a heavy knock at his door. Police hauled him to Madrid, where he was accused of being an Islamic terrorist and of owning weapons.
European and African ministers said on Monday that the waves of illegal migrants seeking a better life in Europe would never be stopped until Europe helps Africa fight poverty. The ministers, meeting in Rabat to reach a plan on migration, were from 50 nations — grouping for the first time countries where migrants start out from, transit countries and the destinations.
Moroccan authorities have launched a wave of repression to stem the growing influence of an illegal Islamist movement, which many observers are already describing as the country’s biggest de-facto political party. Al Adl Wal Ihsane (Justice and Spirituality) is now so popular it would probably win elections if it was legalised and decided to enter politics, analysts said.
Women trained as religious guides in a pioneer programme are not authorised to lead prayers or to hold the post of imam, Morocco’s official religious authority has ruled. The fatwa came weeks after Morocco’s first 50 female ”morchidat,” religious guides, completed training by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, which oversees Morocco’s mosques.
”This is Omar Maarouf calling from Kenitra Central Prison,” said the dejected voice on the other end of the line. The bizarre phone call was the second in two days from a prisoner inside the high-walled Kenitra, one of Morocco’s most notorious lockups.
European intelligence services have warned Morocco that terrorists are planning attacks on political, business and tourist targets in the North African country, the Al Ahdath Al Maghribia newspaper said on Tuesday. ”Moroccan security authorities received a message from their European counterparts warning of [potential] attacks,” the newspaper said, quoting ”well-informed sources”.