Morocco’s Intelligence Services Helped France Avert New Terrorist Attack

Tip-offs offered by Moroccan security services helped France bust a terrorist cell with suspected links to the perpetrators of Catalonia attacks, Moroccan media reported.

The information forwarded by Moroccan intelligence services led France to locate and arrest three individuals who were plotting a bomb attack on a bank, Al Ahdath Al Maghribia reported.

French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said that the individuals under investigation spoke of wanting to blow up a bank with the TATP, a peroxide-based explosive employed by terrorists in several attacks in Western Europe in recent years, including Manchester in May, Brussels in 2016 and Paris.

The Moroccan paper claims that two of the three suspected terrorists are of Moroccan origins, putting forward a possibility that they were in contact with the perpetrators of Barcelona and Cambrils attacks.

France has been under a state of emergency since ISIS jihadists launched simultaneous raids on bars, the national stadium and the Bataclan concert hall in Paris in November 2015, leaving 130 people dead.

More than 230 people have been killed by Islamist-inspired attackers in the past three years in France, which, along with the United States and other countries, are bombing Islamic State bases in Iraq and Syria.

Cooperation between European and Moroccan intelligence services has been fostered since November 2015 following the Paris attacks.

Moroccan intelligence services have helped thwart attacks and bust cells in Belgium, France, spain and in several other countries.