Five guards taken hostage by Salafist prisoners in Morocco.

Summary: Inmates at a Moroccan prison took five guards hostage Tuesday in a second day of unrest that appeared to spread to other jails in the North African country, the state news agency and an independent news portal said.

RABAT: Inmates at a Moroccan prison took five guards hostage Tuesday in a second day of unrest that appeared to spread to other jails in the North African country, the state news agency and an independent news portal said.

The Islamist prisoners' grievances include allegations of torture, unfair trials and arbitrary treatment. They demand release from prison or immediate review of their cases.

The government says the inmates received fair trials and are treated in strict accordance with the law.

"The inmates used iron bars and stones C* to attack the guards," the state news agency MAP said.

"There is a climate of total anarchy in this prison, which houses more than 200 Salafist detainees," according to Abderrahim Mouhtad, the head of the Annassir association, which defends Salafist prisoners' rights.

"Clearly the prison administration intends to take back control of the situation and adopt firmer tactics than before," Mouhtad told AFP.

"These detainees sequestered prison warders yesterday and today. They took on the security forces with stones and the clashes were unusually violent," said a senior official in the ministry of the interior.

According to one prisoner's family member, "the prison authorities wanted to lay their hands on a detainee suspected of having recently broadcast a video on YouTube in which you see the Salafist prisoners protest, inside the prison, about detention conditions."

Citing eyewitnesses, MAP said Monday that the security forces "intervened to establish order."

Some 39 people were injured including 19 members of the security forces and five prison guards Monday, a doctor at the hospital in the town of Sale, near Rabat, where the prison is located, told state television.

The unrest led by the Islamist Salafist Jihadi group is linked to demands for reform in Morocco, a staunch Western ally perceived as a haven of stability in the region.

Street protests organized by the anti-government February 20 movement have also seen an outpouring of complaints by prisoners of torture, frequently documented in interviews filmed on cell phones from behind bars and published on the Internet.

Some of the prisoners were detained after a suicide bomb attack in Casablanca in 2003 that killed 45 people while others were arrested in a years-long crackdown on what authorities said were militant cells plotting attacks.

Human right activists blame authorities for sparking the unrest by trying to transfer the vocal prisoners out of Zaki and confiscate phones with cameras.

The Goud.ma news portal said the security forces fired rubber bullets to tame the protest at Zaki prison. The portal is usually well informed on security matters.

An independent news portal Lakome.ma showed pictures of what it said was one inmate at Zaki with a rubber bullet wound to the back of his neck.

It also published videos showing at least eight inmates in prisons in Tangier and Kenitra with nooses around their necks threatening to commit suicide.

King Mohammad VI last month freed about 100 prisoners, most of whom were members of the Salafist Jihadi group, in what human right officials, appointed by the monarch, said was the prelude to a review of cases of political prisoners.

In a separate development, a judge in Morocco accused seven suspects in a bombing that killed 17 people in a cafe in Marrakesh last month of forming a group "to prepare and commit terrorist acts," a judicial official told AFP.

The seven, including main suspect 25-year-old Adil al-Othmani, are being tried under Morocco's 2004 anti-terrorism law, the official said.

The anti-terror court judge also accused them of "a serious attack on public order, premeditated killing and ambush, possession and fabrication of explosives and belonging to a banned religious group," the official said.

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