RABAT, June 22 (Islamonline & News agencies) - Three Saudi citizens, arrested in Morocco on suspicion of planning attacks in Morocco and against NATO warships in the Strait of Gibraltar, have rejected all charges against them, their attorney said in a newspaper interview Friday, June 21, 2002.

Two of the men had admitted to belonged to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda organization "at a time when this movement challenged the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan before opposing American neo-colonialism in that country," said lawyer Taoufik Moussaiif Benhamou in an interview published in the Islamic Moroccan newspaper Al Assar.

The three were arrested last month in Casablanca and are being held there. They are suspected of belonging to an Al-Qaeda sleeper cell and alleged to have been preparing attacks against Morocco and on NATO vessels, according to the interior ministry, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

But their lawyer said: "There is no element of proof in the dossier…these are just allegations."

Another Moroccan newspaper, meanwhile, reported Friday that militant groups dedicated to Osama bin Laden had spread out across Morocco.

Militant cells had been "implanted just about everywhere across Morocco," the independent daily newspaper Aujourd'hui le Maroc said.

In his interview, the lawyer said the three Saudis had come to the country to settle and live.

Their impending departure for Saudi Arabia at the time of their arrest had simply been linked to "administrative formalities in connection with the marriages of two to Moroccan women."

The two women were also arrested at the time on suspicion of having formed an Al-Qaeda sleeper cell with the Saudis which was planning suicide attacks on Western warships off Gibraltar and on Moroccan territory.

Benhamou and another defense lawyer have also criticized the irregularities in the police investigation into the three Saudis and four Moroccans under investigation with them.

"The attorney general violated penal procedures in divulging the details of the preliminary enquiry," fellow defense attorney Abdallah El Amri told the newspaper Asabah.

"This is the first time there has been such a violation of confidentiality in a preliminary enquiry in Morocco," he added.

In his interview, Benhamou also cited other alleged irregularities, together with "insults and humiliations," of the detained persons.

He said each was being kept in an individual cell without visitation rights.

The lawyer also said police had forced them to sign a written report on interrogations whose contents they did not know. The three Saudis were charged in Casablanca Tuesday with preparing to attack buses around Morocco and a square in Marrakesh.

They have been identified by the Moroccan interior ministry as Hilal Jaber Awwad al-Assiri, Abdullah Mesfer Ali al-Ghamdi and Zuheir al-Thabeti.