MOROCCO - The Al Qaida Arrests.

Earlier this year, a key development occurred which sparked off a series of arrests of Al Qaida members in Morocco. This was the arrest in March of senior Al Qaida figure Abu Zubaidah in Pakistan. Subsequently, apparently at least partly based on information extracted from him at the US holding facility for Al Qaida prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Moroccan authorities intensified their surveillance of suspected Al Qaida operatives living in Morocco.

In fact, authorities had already begun watching suspicious individuals possibly linked to Al Qaida in October 2001. In May and June, a co-ordinated campaign of arrests led to the unravelling of a key 10-member Al Qaida cell in the kingdom. Moroccan authorities said that the objective of this cell was to carry out attacks on US and British warships in the Gibraltar Strait and on the Moroccan city of Marrakesh. On June 18, US officials disclosed to the media that Moroccan authorities had detained Al Qaida leader Abu Zubair Al Haili, a Saudi nicknamed "the bear" because of his 300-pound weight.

Abu Zubair was one of the three or four most senior leaders of Al Qaida next to Osama Bin Laden. He was an associate of Abu Zubaidah, according to the officials. Abu Zubair was "somebody who ran guest houses in Afghanistan for people coming and going to the camps," one official was quoted as saying by media reports on June 18, referring to Al Qaida training camps in Afghanistan. He was involved in assigning them to missions and was "very knowledgeable" about the group's operations, another U.S. official said.

In the Al Qaida hierarchy, Abu Zubair is thought to have been one of only eight operational chiefs - all of whom reported directly to Bin Laden. Considered among the group's top 20 operational commanders, he was the second-highest-ranking leader in the terrorist organization to be taken into custody since the Sept. 11 attacks, behind only Zubaidah.

The US officials also confirmed that Morocco had detained yet another senior operative, a Syrian with German citizenship named Mohammed Haydar Zammar - who was believed to have recruited Mohammed Atta, leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers - and turned him over to Syria. Among those arrested in May and June were at least three Saudis, who were revealed by Moroccan authorities to have been picked up with the help of the intelligence services of several friendly countries.

The three Saudis were identified as Zuhair Hilal Mohamed Tabiti, Jaber Aouad Al Assiri and Abdullah M'Sfer Ali Al Ghamdi. It was reported that two Moroccan women - the wives of two of the men - were arrested and interrogated as well.

The women allegedly acted as couriers and "were aware of what the men were doing", 'Reuters' on June 11 quoted an unnamed official as saying. According to the plans for the attack, the men (aged between 25 and 35) planned to sail inflatable dinghies loaded with explosives alongside ships patrolling the Strait of Gibraltar.

It was reported that the suspects were planning to sail from Ceuta and Melilla, the Spanish enclaves on Moroccan territory. The planned attack, if successful, would have been similar to a strike in October 2000 when two suicide bombers, suspected of being members of Al Qaida, carried out operation against the American warship USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden killing 17 sailors.

Moroccan authorities identified the plot's ringleader, who remains at large, as Abu Al Rahim Al Nashiri, who has been tied to the bombing of the USS Cole. The individuals already arrested were not on the wanted list of any other country, according to reports, and Moroccan authorities carried out interrogation with security officials from other countries watching. The Saudi government had sent its own investigators to Morocco and intelligence officials of the US, British and French governments were in place as well.

Three of the suspects went on trial at a Casablanca criminal appeal court in late October, and a five-judge panel adjourned the case until Dec. 25. This was to give more time for the gathering of witnesses, the defence team indicated. Under Moroccan law, some of the accused could face the death penalty if found guilty.

Ironically, the first man to stand trial for the Sept. 11 attacks was a Moroccan, Mounir Al Motassadeq, who told a German court in Hamburg on Oct. 23 that although he and Mohammed Atta, the alleged ringleader of the suicide hijackers, were close friends, worshipped together at the local mosque and often discussed religion and politics, Atta had never spoken of resorting to violence.

Motassadeq is accused of membership of a terrorist organisation and complicity in the deaths of at least 3116 people, although the number was reduced on the charge sheet to 3045. If convicted, he faces life in prison, which in Germany is usually 15 years. Prosecutors allege he was a "substantial cog" in preparations for the attacks, a background figure who helped cover the tracks of the perpetrators in Hamburg and operated a bank account used, among other things, to pay for some of the hijackers' flying lessons.