Morocco breaks another ISIS cell

Sale – Moroccan authorities announced Monday they had dismantled a militant cell planning to create an Islamic state (ISIS) affiliated, seizing weapons and bomb-making material in raids on their hideouts.
The cell is the latest in a series of radical groups Morocco says it has discovered. The group operated in the southern city of Essaouira and the central town of Sidi Allal Al-Bahraoui.
In the offices of the Central Bureau of Judicial Investigation (BCIJ), journalists were presented arms, ammunition, stun guns, swords and materials seized bomb hideouts. BCIJ is the judicial part of the Moroccan domestic intelligence service.
The five members of the group had pledged allegiance to ISIS, and planned to create a local offshoot called the Caliphate troops in Morocco, at the head office Abdelhak Khayyam said.
The group’s name is inspired by the Algerian group soldiers caliphate, a breakaway faction of Al Qaeda who had declared allegiance to ISIS last year before the kidnapping and beheading of a French tourist.
“The weapons came to Morocco through the eastern borders with Algeria,” said Khayyam.
Hundreds of fighters from Morocco and other North African countries like Tunisia and Algeria have joined Islamist militant forces in the war in Syria. Some threaten to return and create a new wing jihadists in their country of origin, say security experts.
Five members of the last cell were planning to leave Syria and Iraq after perpetrating an attack, authorities said.
Morocco, a Western ally against Islamist militancy, often announces he broke the radical cell accused of plotting attacks.
He suffered many bombings by Islamist miltants, most recently in 2011 in Marrakech.