The lawyer for six of the accused says they will plead not guilty to all the charges. Three Saudi men, their Moroccan wives and another Moroccan man are being charged on nine counts, ranging from attempted murder to forging documents, BBC’s online news service said.

The prosecution claims the three Saudis, with the help of the Moroccans, planned to blow up NATO warships in the Straits of Gibraltar, as well as attack buses in Morocco and a mosque in the center of the city of Marrakech, a popular spot with tourists in the central town.

“This was a real warning,” according to Moroccan Prime Minister Abdel Rahman Youssefi’s party, the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP). The Liberation Party added, “We skirted a catastrophe of the kind Tunisia saw, for example, a few months ago,” Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

This was a reference to an April 11 tanker trunk blast at a Jewish synagogue on the Tunisian resort island of Djerba, which killed 19 people, 14 of them German tourists. German intelligence has linked the truck driver to Al-Qaeda, according to the German press.

The lawyer for six of the suspects in Morocco says the Saudis admit having been members of Al-Qaeda in the past, but he says they renounced the organization after the September 11 attacks and came to Morocco to live a quiet life.

He says they were beaten in custody and forced to sign statements they had not even read.

The seven will be questioned in a closed court by the examining magistrate, whose findings will form the basis of the prosecution. The trial itself will take place in open court some time over the next two weeks, BBC’s online news service reported.

Morocco is also reported to be holding several other Al-Qaeda suspects, including a man believed to be a senior member of the organization.