Similar to the USS Cole bombing....these guys were using their Morroccan wives to be messengers between them and Al Qaeda. http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/africa/06/11/morocco.terror.wives/index.html -- The wives of two men suspected of a terror plot to blow up U.S. and British warships in the Strait of Gibraltar have been arrested by Moroccan police, a security official said Tuesday. This source said the women allegedly knew about their husbands' plans and were used as couriers to deliver messages to al Qaeda. MORE STORIES Morocco breaks terror cell The two women were arrested Monday and were being questioned along with their husbands and another man suspected of taking part in the alleged plot. A government official said Monday three Saudi nationals were arrested last month for allegedly planning to carry out terrorist attacks on U.S. and British warships in the Strait of Gibraltar -- a plot that mirrored the attack on the USS Cole. The official said the plot to attack the ships was made well before the September 11 terror attacks and that the three suspects melded into Moroccan society, including the two who married Moroccan women, as they awaited the green light to carry out the attacks. The official MAP news agency late Tuesday identified the three male suspects as Hilal Jaber Aouad al Assiri, Zuhair Hilal Mohamed al-Tbaiti and Abdullah M'Sfer Ali al-Ghamdi. The women's names were not released. "The group was preparing for acts of violence ... against Western ships crossing the Strait of Gibraltar," MAP said. MAP said Moroccan security services helped dismantle the al Qaeda cell with the aid of various international intelligence agencies, particularly those from the United States and Saudi Arabia. The three suspects were allegedly planning to sail dinghies packed with explosives into U.S. and British ships in the Strait of Gibraltar, the government official said Monday. The alleged plot resembles the one carried out in October 2000 when two suicide bombers detonated their explosives-laden dinghy against the destroyer USS Cole in the port of Aden in Yemen, killing 17 sailors and wounding 37 others.
