(AKI) - The Moroccan and Algerian authorities are worried jihadists currently in Iraq could return home and set up new terror cells, Moroccan terrorism expert Abdallah Rami told Spanish daily El Pais. "They will come to continue waging holy war which for them is like the call to prayer," he said. Cities such as Tetouan in northern Morocco and El Oued in Algeria could become real hotbeds for jihadi recruitment, the paper warns.Many of the jihadists are ready to use what they learned in Iraq back in their own countries. "And this is what North Africans fear," said Rami. He is a researcher at Morocco's Centre for the Study of Social Sciences. The members of North African jihadi cells are Salafites. "For Salafites, there is not much difference between the United States and the Moroccan government, which it considers apostate," said Moroccan terrorism expert Mohammed Darif.
"Al-Qaeda's priority remains Iraq," said Mohammed el Ayadi, a political scientist at the Hassan II Mohammedia University in Mohammedia, northwestern Morocco. "For bin Laden's network, Morocco currently respresents a logistical base above all," he added.
No hard data exist on jihadi terrorists who have volunteered to wage holy war in Iraq, but many are from Algeria, experts say. In the deprived Jamaa Mezuak neighbourhood of Tetouan, at least 40 young jihadists went to Iraq according to the Moroccan weekly Le Journal. Similiar numbers of jihadists are believed to have headed to Iraq from El Oued. The Moroccan and Algerian authorities remain on high alert after several recent suicide bombings in Casablanca and Algiers.