Morocco, a pre-tournament outsider, can no longer reach the last eight after Group C losses to Tunisia and Gabon.

“I was expecting these kinds of rumours if we failed but they have no foundation,” Kharja said on Monday.

The north African neighbours’ last Nations Cup meeting came in the 2004 final won by Tunisia, who also denied Morocco qualification to the 2006 World Cup.

And the Carthage Eagles claimed the bragging rights again with goals in either half from Khaled Korbi and Youssef Msakni, with Houssine Kharja getting a dubious late consolation for Morocco.

Tunisia coach Sami Trabelsi said: “This was a precious victory that will help us. We played well as a team…but the competition is long, this is just one victory, we have lots of matches in front of us, I hope we can progress.

“We were better in defence than – when you look at the quality of players we have available – in midfield and in attack.”

Captain Karim Haggui added: “We deserved to win, I hope our new generation of players will write their own history now.”

Morocco coach Eric Gerets said that his side had to bounce back against co-hosts Gabon.

“This is the Nations Cup, it’s full of surprises, that’s life, now we’ve got to show the mental strength we’ve displayed over the past year,” said the Belgian.

The absence of the Islamists from the protests will further weaken the reform movement, whose power has greatly diminished since an opposition party won elections on November 25 in the kingdom.

The Justice and Charity group has been a stalwart presence at the weekly democracy protests organised by February 20th pro-democracy movement that shook the country earlier this year.

“At the beginning of the demonstrations, we agreed with the demands for the end to despotism and corruption and only the street would decide the limit of the demands,” said the group’s spokesperson Hassan Bennajeh.

“With time, we found many elements want to impose the parliamentary monarchy as a limit – we do not agree.”

Constitutional reforms

Some members of the religious group, which is banned from politics but tolerated by authorities, have called for Morocco to become a republic, while the February 20 movement would only like to relegate the king to a figurehead role in a parliamentary monarchy.

The movement’s name comes from the date it hit the streets after a wave of pro-democracy protests that have rocked many Arab countries this year.

Omar Radi, a prominent member of the organisation said that while the decision of the Islamist group’s will have an effect on the movement it will not, however, mean the end of February 20th.

“The movement will continue because all the reasons for the anger still exist in Morocco,” he said.

Morocco’s king moved swiftly to meet some of the demonstrators’ demands when the protests began and proposed a series of constitutional reforms that gave more power to the elected government.

The country drafted a new constitution and on November 25 an Islamist party, long in opposition, won the poll.

Pro-democracy activists say all the changes are merely a decor and that most power is still in the hands of the king and his advisers.

The new head of government, Abdelilah Benkirane of the Justice and Development Party, has offered dialogue with the February 20 movement but they have refused.

The Justice and Charity group, meanwhile, said it still believed in the legitimacy of the democracy movement’s demands and called for a change in the “archaic regime”.

The Socialist Union of Popular Forces, founded by the iconic opposition leader Mehdi Ben Barka, came third in the November 25 legislative election and had been in talks to join a broad government coalition.

“The USFP is now part of the opposition, following a decision made Sunday by its national council,” Driss Lachgar, a member of the party’s political bureau, told AFP.

Abdelilah Benkirane, who was appointed prime minister by King Mohammed VI after his Justice and Development Party (PJD) secured the most votes in last month’s poll, had asked the USFP to join his government.

“By joining the opposition, our political party will contribute to developing the country’s democracy,” Lachgar said.

The PJD, which became the latest religious party to make electoral gains in the region on the back of the Arab Spring pro-democracy revolts, still has plenty of options to form a parliamentary majority.

As Tunisia and Egypt ousted their longtime dictators through popular uprisings earlier this year, Morocco’s king nipped swelling protests in the bud by offering a constitutional reform that curbed his near absolute powers.

Pro-democracy activists believe the reforms initiated earlier this year are not enough and believe the vote will do little more than rubber-stamp the King’s power.

It also comes following a Council of Europe parliamentary delegation that said there was “little enthusiasm” for the country ahead of the election and added it was concerned over the expected low voter turnout.

Activists carried stickers reading “I’m boycotting, how about you?” in an effort to galvanize support for their movement in Casablanca.

Elections in the country are going forward earlier than scheduled as a result of the government’s reform process.

The reforms came after the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt forced out their leaders and the King amended the constitution to give more power to the elected parliament.

But activists say ahead of the November 25 vote that the king has not done enough to ensure an elected body means anything.

“Sure, he made an effort, but we want to have more say in the future of our country and with this kind of government and elections, it will not do much,” Ibrahim Said, a young Moroccan student, told Bikyamasr.com via telephone from Casablanca.

The demonstrations, the largest in the country for some time, said the elections were more of a “facade democracy” than the real reforms that they would like to see in the country.

“Moroccans, these elections are a piece of theater!” said the movement’s statement for the demonstration.

The court gave a life sentence to Adil al-Atmani’s top accomplice Hakim Dah, but relatives of those killed voiced outrage at the light sentences given to the seven other co-defendants, which ranged from three to four years.

In a closing hearing Thursday, Atmani’s lawyer insisted his client was innocent and that he only confessed after being coerced.

Even though he ultimately retracted his confession and denied links to jihadist groups including Al-Qaeda’s north Africa wing, the court ruled that Atmani should be executed, a penalty not carried out in Morocco since 1992.

When the verdict against him was read out, Atmani’s sister began shouting, preventing the judge from reading the verdicts of the other defendants. She then fainted.

Prosecutors had also sought the death penalty against Dah, but the court gave him life in prison for his role in the blasts that killed eight French nationals, three Swiss citizens and three Moroccans in Marrakesh’s bustling Djemaa El-Fna square.

Four other defendants were sentenced to four years in prison, while the remaining three were given three years each.

Those sentences provoked outrage among some victims’ relatives, who were in court Friday.

“It is unacceptable and intolerable to sentence the accomplices to only four years in prison,” said Isabelle Dewally, mother of ten-year-old Camilla who was killed in the attacks.

“This means that you can help a terrorist murderer and get only four years,” she said.

“It’s scandalous”, said Jacques Sombret of Marseille, who pointed out that the some the convicts thanked the court for the sentences issued.

“The world will laugh at your justice. Morocco betrayed me,” added Sombret, whose 40-year-old daughter, a mother of two, was also killed.

Lawyers representing some of the victims had previously asked the court not to issue death penalties, saying the accused should be given life instead, partly to deprive them of boasting that they will die as martyrs.

Atmani’s lawyer argued that Moroccan courts should no longer be condemning people to death, as the country’s new constitution, massively backed in a July referendum, invokes the “right to life”.

“I am surprised that the court continues to pronounce death penalties as the kingdom has de facto abolished it. This sentence remains in the law, but it must not be issued while it is moving towards elimination.”

Security sources said Atmani, 25, left two bags containing bombs on the cafe terrace and triggered the blasts with a mobile phone just after leaving.

He insisted he had never made explosive devices and even denied ever going to Marrakesh but he appeared hesitant when he was grilled on witness accounts that identified him on the day of the bombing.

The Marrakesh bombing was the deadliest in the north African kingdom since attacks in the coastal city of Casablanca in 2003 which killed 33 people and 12 suicide bombers.

Police described some of the convicts in the Marrakesh attack as “admirers of Al-Qaeda” and Moroccan authorities had initially blamed Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) for the bombing.

Guatemala also claimed one of the five non-permanent seats, but extra rounds of voting were ordered to decide a place for Europe and Africa’s second seat.

Pakistan will now sit alongside regional arch-rival India on the 15-member Security Council from January 1. Morocco had accused the African Union of trying to stop it getting a seat.

The three countries managed to secure the required two thirds majority in the 193-member UN General Assembly in the first round of voting.

Morocco secured 151 votes. But Togo and Mauritania were to face off in a new vote for Africa’s second seat. Neither got the required majority in the second round.

Pakistan got 129 votes, easily beating Kyrgyzstan, which made a late bid for the Asia-Pacific group seat and harnessed just 55 backers.

Guatemala was unopposed for the Latin American seat being given up by Brazil, but two countries abstained.

Neither Azerbaijan (74 votes), Slovenia (67) nor Hungary (52) got close to the two-thirds mark and so the European seat being given up by Bosnia went to extra rounds of voting with Hungary dropping out.

Pakistan and India have promised to work with each other in the Security Council despite their rival nuclear arsenals and past history of conflict.

They have been on the council together at least twice in the seven-decade history of the global body. India will stay on the council until the end of 2012.

“There will be no problem. We want to work together,” said Abdullah Hussain Haroon, Pakistan’s UN ambassador, before the vote. “There are many issues where we have common views,” added India’s UN envoy Hardeep Singh Puri.

Morocco’s candidacy caused controversy because it is not a member of the African Union, which had backed Mauritania and Togo.

It will take the Arab seat on the Security Council which traditionally alternates between the Asia group and the Africa group. Lebanon came from the Asia group.

Morocco, strongly backed by France, had launched an aggressive campaign to get a seat.

Morocco’s Foreign Minister Taieb Fassi Fihri said his country “showed it could convince a large part of the international community in the four corners of the world.”

He added: “We are extremely honoured in the trust put in us by the continent, our African brothers, despite the adversity, despite the attempts made in vain to exclude Morocco from this contest under the pretext that it did not belong to a certain continental organisation.”

“The African Union wanted to impose just two candidates, by excluding Morocco. And today, a large majority of African nations decided to show solidarity with Morocco, to trust Morocco, to support Morocco,” he said.

He insisted Morocco will defend Africa’s “vital interests” and that there should be no link to deadlock over the disputed territory of Western Sahara.

Morocco started occupying the barren but mineral-rich North African territory in 1976 and the UN brokered a ceasefire with rebels fighting for a separate state in 1991. Some African Union nations want stronger UN efforts to organise a promised self-determination referendum.

“There is no link between our contribution and the role, the mandate we have today from the international community, and the evolution of the question of” Western Sahara, said the minister.

The small protest was significant because Morocco keeps a very close watch on the nation’s mosques to guard against extremist thought like that of al-Qaida.

Imams are given prepared sermons to read during weekly Friday prayers and are not permitted to deviate from the text.

The five-man group was operating in the cities of Casablanca and Sale and one of the members was related to a high-ranking al-Qaida operative in Iraq, the report quoting the national intelligence agency said late Saturday.

Demonstrators responding to a call from the February 20 Movement filled the city’s Al-Harti boulevard, with a crowd police estimated at 5,000 and organisers at 15,000.

The movement, which takes its name from its first day of protest, was inspired by the pro-democracy groups that have sprung up across the Arab world.