(Adds detail, background, analyst comment) RABAT, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Five Moroccans sent home from the Guantanamo U.S. military camp in 2004 were acquitted on Friday of terrorism charges levelled at them on their return. The five had been in and out of detention and questioning by police, accused of criminal gang membership, failure to denounce crimes harming state security, funding criminal organisations and passport forgery. They were acquitted by Rabat's criminal appeal court, Moroccan state news agency MAP said. Two of them are still being held on a separate charge of trying to recruit volunteers to fight in Iraq. The U.S. government, a staunch ally of Morocco, has repatriated nine Moroccans from Guantanamo since August 2004 and all of them were put on trial. Many of the inmates at Guantanamo were captured by U.S.-led forces fighting the Islamist Taliban government in Afghanistan. Moroccan analysts say relatively few people from the North African kingdom fought for the Taliban, compared to the number of fighters from Egypt and the Arab Gulf states. Four Moroccans remain at the maximum-security prison, according to the government, although rights activists say there are more. "The fact the Americans released the five from Guantanamo already proves their innocence," said Moroccan analyst Mohamed Darif. He said there may also have been less pressure to find the five guilty than after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and suicide bombings in the Moroccan coastal city of Casablanca in 2003. Moroccan authorities say they have broken up more than 50 radical Islamist cells and rounded up thousands of people since the 2003 attacks, which killed 45 people. Earlier this month the government said it had dismantled a radical Islamist cell recruiting volunteers to fight in Iraq and arrested 26 people.
