It was an unlikely setting for a Jewish cemetery and the group, there to attend a rededication ceremony, was also out of the ordinary.

Among those gathered at the event in Cape Verde, an archipelago of islands 300 miles off the coast of Senegal, were high ranking Americans, Europeans and Moroccans, including a representative of King Mohammed VI, a major benefactor of the project.

Magui Kakon, probably the only Jewish woman to have ever contested a parliamentary election in an Arab country, stood for Morocco's Party of the Social Centre this week.

Despite failing to win a parliamentary seat, Ms Kakon won 80,000 votes, up by 50,000 on her 2007 election campaign, and she remains upbeat.

The trial of the nine men suspected of carrying out the fatal bomb attack in a Marrakesh café in April is to open later this week.

The blast, in a popular tourist spot in the old quarter of the Moroccan city, left 17 people dead including British Jew Peter Moss.

Mr Moss, a well-known travel writer and a long-time JC contributor, was 59 and had two children.

Three people have been arrested in Morocco on suspicion of involvement in the deadly café bomb last week.

The Interior Ministry described one of the detained men as the main suspect behind the attack, which killed 16 people including British travel writer Peter Moss.

Horror is the only word to describe the Argana Restaurant in Marrakesh minutes after it was blown to pieces. Bodies and shredded parts were strewn around; ambulances dashed up to the site and pulled away at speed.