FYI, Bombers live in slums

[ghost_of_theo]

Slum of Morocco's Casablanca Producing Suicide Bombers - 11 of 13 Who Perished in May Attack

BY SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI Associated Press Writer

SIDI MOUMEN, Morocco May 15, 2005 — Women lug jugs of water from a common tap as children play in the narrow and winding alleys. But it is the searing gazes of the jobless young men lounging outside corrugated-metal roof shacks that best tell the story of Carriere Thomas, a squalid shantytown in the Casablanca suburb of Sidi Moumen.

The encampment was home to 11 of 13 suicide bombers who detonated explosives-laden backpacks at five targets in Casablanca the night of May 16, 2003 killing 32 bystanders.

Residents say the settlement, with 50,000 mostly illiterate and unemployed residents, was easy prey for recruiters from the Islamic extremist movement Salafiyah Jihadiya back then and remains so, two years later.

New housing and promised government improvements have mostly failed to materialize.

"People have no education, so the young get attracted to their ideology," said Yousef Jalil, 23, whose brother, Rachid, was one of the recruits. But before setting off his explosives, Rachid panicked and fled the scene. He's now on death row. Two other co-activists also changed their minds just before attacking.

Rachid, 29, had worked as a butcher with only elementary education. His cousin, Mohammed El Arbaoui, also a butcher, went through with it and blew himself up, one day before his 22nd birthday.

Now both families insist that the recruiters, also residents of the shantytown, had threatened to harm their families if they refused to take part.

During their trial, Jalil, Mohammed El Omari, 25, and Yassine Lahnech, 24 the three men who changed their minds claimed they had been threatened by another bomber.

The three men and a fourth, Hassan Taousi, 26, considered to be a leading member of Salafiya Jihadiya, all received death sentences.

Intelligence officials close to the investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity, say the main recruiter was a 30-year-old grocer named Abdelrazaq Rtiwi.

One official says he was "just an ordinary guy," who unlike many Islamic mujahedeen militants, had not fought in Afghanistan, Bosnia or Chechnya, and indeed may never have left Sidi Moumen.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/...C-RSSFeeds0312