Rabat - The investigation conducted following the dismantling of a terrorist cell, whose members were operating in Nador and Melilia to recruit Moroccan fighters willing to join the Islamic State Organization in Syria and Iraq, revealed that the cell's members named themselves the Ansar (supporters) of Islamic State in Maghreb Al Aqsa, said on Sunday Morocco's Interior Ministry.
The cell's members have recently showed their determination to join, individually, the ranks of the Islamic State in the Syrian and Iraqi regions after intensifying their contacts with Moroccan jihadists, already members of this terrorist organization, who were planning to return to Morocco to perpetrate barbaric and brutal acts similar to assaults against Syrian and Iraqi soldiers and anyone who opposes them, said the ministry in a statemen.
After multiplying air raids by the coalition forces against the Syrian-Iraqi region and tightening security measures against volunteers for Jihad in the region, the cell's members had decided to join Jund al-Khilafah group in Algeria (Soldiers of the Caliphate) which has recently sworn allegiance to the Islamic State Organization after claiming having beheaded French hostage Hervé Gourdel in retaliation for France's joining the coalition forces, it said.
The investigation reveals that the cell's members were planning to copy the Islamic State's experience of terror in Morocco and were watching the pictures of Syrian and Iraqi soldiers' corpses exhibited by the said terrorist organization.
The suspects will be brought to justice after the completion of the probe led under the supervision of the public prosecutor's office.