Rabat - A Moroccan suspected of involvement in the 2003 Casablanca suicide bombings planned to establish military bases in the country's northern mountains, judicial sources were Wednesday quoted by media reports as saying. Saad Houssaini, 38, is facing charges of attacking state security at a Rabat court.
Houssaini, who was detained earlier this month, is believed to have co-founded the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM) in 2001.
The GICM has been blamed for a string of attacks against Western and Jewish targets, which claimed 45 lives including those of 12 suicide bombers in May 2003.
Houssaini received military training in Afghanistan in the use of light weapons, making explosives, guerrilla techniques and street combat, according to police investigators.
He met with al-Qaeda leaders in several countries and created a GICM military committee aimed at establishing camps in the northern Rif and Atlas mountains.
The camps would have been used to lodge volunteers, to train them in war techniques and to produce explosives, according to a judicial source quoted by the national news agency MAP.
Another cell which was dismantled last summer, the Ansar el-Mahdi, is also believed to have intended to use the Rif mountains as a base to launch an armed campaign against the government.
After the Casablanca bombings, Houssaini allegedly established a new network, recruiting 18 Moroccans to become suicide bombers in Iraq.
The GICM is also thought to have been involved in the 2004 Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 people. However, Spanish police have said that they do not have evidence linking Houssaini personally with the attacks.
