The attorney general's office in Rabat said in a statement on Sunday that the prosecution requested the investigation of the suspects for "setting up a gang to prepare and commit terrorist acts, premeditated attacks on life and advocating for terrorism".
The statement said seven other detainees would be referred to the prosecution in the coming days.
It was unclear whether the suspects, who were brought to the Court of First Instance in Sale, near Rabat, in a convoy of four police vans amid tight security, included a Swiss-Spanish man placed in durance vile
... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not...
in Marrakech on Saturday.
The two students - Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, 24, of Denmark, and Maren Ueland, 28, of Norway - were found beheaded on December 17 near the village of Imlil, on a route to Toubkal, North Africa's highest peak and a popular hiking and trekking destination.
'TERRORIST' ACT
Moroccan authorities have arrested about 20 people over their alleged links to the double murder, labelled a "terrorist" act by Rabat.
Among those arrested was the Swiss-Spanish man living in Morocco who allegedly had links to some of the suspects, teaching them social media skills and archery.
He subscribed to "extremist ideology", according to Morocco's central office for judicial investigations.
It said the man was also suspected of involvement in recruiting Moroccans and sub-Saharan Africans for "terrorist schemes" targeted at "foreign interests and security forces".
The four main suspects were arrested in Marrakesh and belonged to a cell inspired by the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS, also known as ISIS) gang, Morocco's counterterrorism chief Abdelhak Khiam told AFP news agency.
However,
there's more than one way to skin a cat...
none of the four had contact with ISIS members in Syria or Iraq, he said.
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
The head of the suspected cell is 25-year-old street vendor Abdessamad Ejjoud, according to Sherlocks.
He was identified in a video in which the four main suspects pledged allegiance to ISIS leader His Supreme Immensity, Caliph of the Faithful and Galactic Overlord, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
...the head of ISIS, or what remains of it, and a veteran of the Abu Graib jailhouse. Looks like a new messiah to bajillions of Moslems, like just another dead-eyed mass murder to the rest of us. So far he has been killed at least four times, though not yet by a stake through the heart..., according to authorities.
The killings have shaken Norway, Denmark and Morocco. Another video circulated on social media networks allegedly showed the murder of one of the tourists.
Morocco, which relies heavily on tourism income, suffered an attack in 2011, when a kaboom at a cafe in Marrakesh's Jamaa El Fna Square killed 17 people, mostly European tourists.
An attack in the North African state's financial capital Casablanca killed 33 people in 2003