Morocco Slum Producing Suicide Bombers

[DrDebug]

May 15, 12:48 PM (ET)
BY SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI

SIDI MOUMEN, Morocco (AP) - Women lug jugs of water from a common tap as children play in the narrow and winding alleys. But it is the searing gazes of the jobless young men lounging outside corrugated-metal roof shacks that best tell the story of Carriere Thomas, a squalid shantytown in the Casablanca suburb of Sidi Moumen.

The encampment was home to 11 of 13 suicide bombers who detonated explosives-laden backpacks at five targets in Casablanca the night of May 16, 2003 - killing 32 bystanders.

Residents say the settlement, with 50,000 mostly illiterate and unemployed residents, was easy prey for recruiters from the Islamic extremist movement Salafiyah Jihadiya back then - and remains so, two years later.
(...)
"People have no education, so the young get attracted to their ideology," said Yousef Jalil, 23, whose brother, Rachid, was one of the recruits. But before setting off his explosives, Rachid panicked and fled the scene. He's now on death row. Two other co-activists also changed their minds just before attacking.

- http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050515/D8A3NQRG0.html



Extreme poverty is the breeding ground of extremism