More indications that "moderate" Morocco is not deserving of that epithet. "47 people convicted in Morocco terror trial," by Hassan Alaoui for the Associated Press, October 17:
RABAT, Morocco (AP) — A Moroccan court convicted 47 people and sentenced them to up to 30 years in prison over a suicide bombing last year at a Casablanca Internet cafe, a lawyer said Friday.Gee, did this "criminal gang" subscribe to any particular ideology, any common worldview or framework -- any Islam?A criminal court in Sale, near the capital Rabat, gave the longest jail term of 30 years to Abdelkrim Ougard late Thursday, said lawyer Khalil Idrissi, who defended two other suspects on trial. Ougard was accused of forming a criminal gang with the aim of committing terrorist acts, making explosives, theft, forgery and failure to denounce terrorism.
All those convicted were accused of links to a March 2007 suicide bombing at a Casablanca cybercafe. Abdelfettah Raydi, 23, detonated his charge after the cafe's owner caught him surfing an Islamist Web site.After the 2007 bombing, a police investigation turned up an alleged plot involving dozens of suspects to attack Casablanca's port and police stations and tourist sites around Morocco, a moderate Muslim nation and popular tourist destination.
Youssef Khouidri, who was with Raydi at the time of the cybercafe bombing but dropped his bombs and fled, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He and two of the others convicted were minors at the time of the explosion, the state news agency MAP said.
Twelve others were given six to 15 years, and four people were acquitted, lawyer Idrissi said. Idrissi said most of the sentences were overly harsh and based on flimsy evidence.
Half a dozen terrorism cells have been dismantled recently in Morocco, a strong ally of the United States in its war against terrorism.
In a sweep last year, police shot one suspect dead, while three others blew themselves up to avoid capture. The blasts killed a policeman and wounded 21 other people. Days later, two others blew themselves up near the U.S. Consulate in Casablanca.
This North African country of 33 million has also seen a rise of political and radical Islam in recent years. Suicide bombings in Casablanca in 2003 killed 45 people, and about 1,000 suspected Islamic militants are behind bars, either awaiting trial or sentenced on terrorism charges.
Another major Moroccan terrorist trial opened Thursday in the same court in Sale, involving a Belgian of Moroccan descent, Abdelkader Belliraj, accused of running a cell of 36 people and ordering the murder of a Muslim moderate leader killed in Brussels in the 1980s. The proceedings were immediately adjourned until Nov. 14.
If only we ever convicted 47 terrorists in the Free World. That would be awesome.
OT: Afghans enslave and sexually abuse a teen girl in Seattle:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,439604,00.html
A criminal court in Sale, near the capital Rabat..."
-- from the article above
And birthplace of a recent Foreign Minister of France, Dominique de Villepin, who spent the first three years of his life in Morocco, which always made him feel that he had a special insight into the Arabs and Islam. In that respect, in a variant on the old ontogeny-recapitulates-phylogeny (or is it the other way round? I keep forgetting), he, D. de V., merely mimics or reflects or embodies those French rulers and members of the elite who have been flattering themselves that because the French once controlled Morocco and Tunisia (for about 40 years), and Algeria (for 132 years), that therefore they, the French, have a knowledge, a grasp, of Islam and the Arabs that others, especially the insufferable Americans, do not have. They are right that the Americans don't have that grasp, but they are wrong in thinking that a colonial past, that ended nearly 50 years ago, in 1962, gives them special insight into the Arabs or Islam. For if it did, they would never have allowed, under Giscard d'Estaing, a policy of "family reunification" that permitted Arab male workers to bring in their plural wives, and their dozen children apiece -- or at least the means of production for those dozen children. It is the French who, thinking how very comprehending they are, who allowed themselves to be deluded, and many of them, including Sarkozy who thinks he is unfoolable, continue to be deluded about the nature and magnitude of the threat to France from its 5-7 million Muslim inhabitants, some of whom have obtained citizenship, and very few of whom can be said to owe their loyalty to the legal and political institutions, to the social understandings, of France and its -- see Chamfort -- "perfected civilization."
Born in Sale. Or Rabat. Or Oran. It doesn't matter. If you don't know about the texts, tenets, attitudes, atmospherics of Islam, if you forget what actually happened, how the French brought hospitals and schools, modern agriculture, broad boulevards and beautiful buildings, to Oran and Algiers and a hundred other urban centers, and even though a French connection (those young teachers who go out bravely every year to keep the mission civilisatrice going) continues, there has been a steady observable decline in the nations of the Maghreb, the further away they get from their French interregnum, between those "two eternities of darkness," to borrow a famous phrase, that Islam fore and Islam aft, provide.
detonated his charge after the cafe's owner caught him surfing an Islamist Web site.
OH NO! Surfing islamist websites! Cant get caught doing that!
Like he wasnt going to detonate anyhow... he had to wait until he got caught srufing an Islamist website lol
I have an "islamist: website. we condemn terror attacks.
You guys find the weirdest new sometimes.
BTW, the west is hardly the "free world", although it is the best place to be in modern times :D
To think that Morocco was one of the first countries to recognize the United States as a legitimate country.............
In the next two hundred years we would go on to become the most advanced country in the world. And Morocco would go on to become..............Morocco.
There's a lesson in that.
I don't know if the Kingdom of Morocco was one of the first foreign states to recognize the new nation, but it was possibly the first state with which United States signed, in 1786, a Treaty of Peace And Friendship. This, however, was ignored by the Moroccans, and they continued to make war on American ships and seamen, just like Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers, the other Barbary states on the southern littoral of the Mediterranean.
Indeed, if Morocco was the first or among the first to sign a treaty of peace and friendhsip, it was also one of several Barbary states against which war was first waged by the United States, and this First Barbary War began in 1801, only fifteen years after that "Treaty of Peace and Friendship."
See how much the friendship of an Islamic state is worth......
I guess my point would be that Islamic states are static and stagnant.
Whereas, Western countries are flexible and forward looking. We progress whilst Islamic states are mired in the past.
Part of the problem the Islamic world has is the very ridigity of Islam itself. The Koran (As poorly written as it is) is supposed to be the actual word of god. This makes it very difficult to make changes in the interpretation. Add to this the problem that so much in the Koran is so specific. It is very difficult to moderate the death penalty for leaving Islam. You either do it or you do not. Same goes for stoning to death a convicted adultress.
This has got to go. NOBODY should EVER be stoned to death. I would think that modern thought would have made this clear a long time ago. Yet riots erupted in Nigeria (2006) after the court refused to enforce the penalty. Just a threat of change is being resisted violently. With all of the contact Islam is having with other cultures through the world economy, we can expect organized violence (Irregular and open warfare) for a very long time.
A moderate Muslim Nation...
What does that mean exactly? Particularly when you find crap like this goin' on because one o' their fellow Morons detonated at a piss poor time and place, thus revealing the rest of the gang and their plot to kill innocents. Well...innocent to us at least.
Twits like this are no better than the gang bangin' punks that are so proud of the fact that they take lives for little or no reason.
It's not the crime, or the bombing...it's that feeling of belonging to something bigger than you. Serving the cause, whether it's killing the Crip who strays into Blood territory, or carrying out a bombing, suicide or otherwise. Part of the pack.
Jihadis are promised their reward after death...the gangster gets his reward for his service in the here and now. All things forbidden on Earth...right? No limits.
Both tend to die young. One through choice and at an appointed time and place...the other just keeps rollin' the dice til a bullet finds em'.
The other difference is that there are no cowards in the gangs. Cowardice is all there is for the Jihadi who plots the bombings...sends others out to their deaths for his own political gain, whilst sitting safe somewhere. That's what Islam is about...politics. Are Imams and Ayatollahs elected by the people? I dinnah thin' so.
A government that controls every aspect of your life in the guise of a religion...nothing more.
Islam is a lie and truth is killing it...
And afore anyone goes down that road...I have nothing against Muslims...Islam however, is custom made for men who seek ultimate power, to wield it.