Established in the mid to late 1990s, Salafia Jihadia is an Islamist terrorist organization based in Morocco. The group's goals are to overthrow "impious" Arab governments, pressure the West to stop support of "corrupt" Arab regimes, and achieve these objectives through violent jihad. Salafia Jihadia recruits mainly from Morocco's suburbs, rife with poverty and poor social conditions. This group is one of the largest terrorist groups in Morocco, and it is a close ally and offshoot of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM), which was one of the original fundamentalist terrorist groups in Morocco. Salfia Jihadia is compartmentalized, fairly decentralized, and "more of a doctrine than an organization", lending credence to the belief that the organization is actually a network of loosely-affiliated Moroccan fundamentalist groups which may include al Hijra Wattakfir, Attakfir Bidum Hijra, Assirat al Mustaqim, Ansar al Islam, and the Moroccan Afghans.
In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet commented that Salafia Jihadia is made up of many small, local, and autonomous cells. It is alleged that some of these cells receive operational help from the Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) and strategic guidance from al Qaeda in Iraq's leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. This suggests that Salafia Jihadia is responsible for operational planning and the delegation or execution of actual attack plans. Some also allege that to facilitate terrorist suspect processing and conviction, the name "Salafia Jihadia" was created by the Moroccan government as a catch-all categorization for the many different Salafist groups that operate in Morocco. In fact, Salafia Jihadia is also the name of the larger Wahabi jihadist doctrine exported to the rest of the Arab world by Saudi Arabian radicals following the Gulf War of 1991. In contrast, most Moroccans follow the moderate Malekite version of Islam.
Members of Salafia Jihadia have been charged with arson, petty crime, kidnapping, drug dealing, and murder, though the group best known for planning and executing a massive coordinated suicide bombing in Casablanca on May 16, 2003 that resulted in 45 casualties. The attack targeted a private Spanish club (Casa de España) near the Spanish consulate, the Israeli Alliance Club, a Jewish cemetery, the Belgian consulate, and a hotel popular with businesspeople. All 14 suicide bombers, including the two who backed out at the last minute, were from the same downtrodden suburb of Casablanca, Sidi Moumen. This attack led to a surge in general membership as well as an influx of "religious theorists" into the group, mostly from the Assirat al Mostaquim (Straight Path) religious association. In all, 31 Salafia Jihadia members were found to be responsible, 10 of which were given the death penalty (Yussef Fikri, Mohamed Damir, Saleh Zarli, Abderrazak Faouzi, Kamal Hanuichi, Bouchaib Guermach, Lakbir Kutubi, Buchaib Mghader, Omar Maaruf and Laarbi Daqiq). Salafia Jihadia's spiritual leader, Mohamed Fizazi, was given a sentence of 30 years in prison.
The investigations following the March 2004 Madrid bombings (claimed by the al Qaeda-affiliated Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade) uncovered several pieces of evidence that suggest elements of Salafia Jihadia played at least a minor role in the attack. In fact, Spanish authorities working with their Moroccan counterparts questioned many Moroccans, including several members of Salafia Jihadia, regarding their involvement in the attack. One of the investigation's prime suspects is Jamal Zougam, a Moroccan who was spotted on one of the trains shortly before the bombs were detonated. A member of al-Qaeda's Spanish cell led by Abu Dahdah (indicted in Spain on charges of aiding preparations for the September 11th attacks), Zougam is alleged to have planned the Madrid attacks and planted at least one of the bombs himself.
Zougam had close ties with Salafia Jihadia elements and reportedly shared a safehouse with Salafia Jihadia terrorist Abdelaziz Beyaich, who took part in the Casablanca attack. A wiretap obtained by a French private investigator also revealed that Zougam participated in a meeting with Salafia Jihadia leader Mohamed Fizazi in 2001. Fizazi is known to have preached at a Hamburg Islamic center frequented by 9/11 operational leader Mohammed Atta.
Though much of Salafia Jihadia's top leadership was captured soon after the Casablanca attacks, the group still poses a threat to regional stability due to its flattened organizational structure and substantial base of contacts with other fundamentalist groups in the region.
These data were collected for the Terrorism Knowledge Base® (TKB®), managed by the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) until March 2008. START has neither reviewed nor verified these data, but is presenting this information as a service to the homeland security community.
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