Suspicion at death of bomb suspect

Morocco's two leading human rights groups have demanded a public inquiry into the death in police custody last Wednesday of Abdelhaq Bentassir, the alleged mastermind of the Casablanca suicide bombings which killed 43 people last month.

They have joined the Socialist party, part of the majority coalition in parliament, in calling for a new forensic examination of his body.

The Moroccan Human Rights Association said that in view of previous deaths of people held by the security services, there should be an inquiry to establish the circumstances of his death.

Mr Bentassir, who had been in good health, had been detained five days earlier than the date the security services gave for his arrest, his family said.

The state prosecutor, Moulay Abdellah Alaoui Belghiti, had said that Mr Bentassir had been detained two days before his death and died on the way to hospital from heart and liver problems.

"It was established that this disease results from taking a certain type of pills," he said.

The Moroccan authorities described Mr Bentassir, who came from the central city of Fez and was also known as Moul Sebbat, as the "main coordinator" of the May 16 bombings.

Since the attacks Morocco has introduced a tough anti-terrorism law, which has also been criticised by rights groups.

Twenty-eight people are being charged in connection with the attacks, the state news agency, Map, says.

A French convert to Islam, Robert Richard Antoine Pierre, was arrested in northern Morocco yesterday in connection with the attacks.

It was seen as a further attack on human rights that the editor of the satirical magazine Demain, Ali Lmrabet, was jailed for four years last month for "insulting the king". He is on hunger strike and in hospital.

Yesterday Aboubakr Jamai, editor of the progressive Le Journal Hebdomadaire, said Morocco's progress to true democracy was threatened by the harsh reaction of King Mohammed VI's regime to the Casablanca attacks.