Moroccan Families Plea for State Aid to Repatriate Detained ISIS Fighters

Moustapha Idrissi, 25, has not given any sign of life since 2016 when he went to Syria to fight alongside the jihadists. His sister, Rachida, suspects that he is being held in the Islamic State camps in Syria or Iraq. Like Rachida, dozens of Moroccan families are searching for their children, brothers and sisters who disappeared overnight to become jihadist fighters now held in the camps in Syria and Iraq. These families are asking the state for help to have them repatriated to Morocco.

To read: Morocco Faces Challenge as Over 1,100 IS-Linked Nationals Await Repatriation from Syria

"We recognize that they made a mistake, but we want them to return to Morocco, even if they have to serve a life sentence. It’s better than the current uncertainty," assures EFE, Rachida, whose brother Moustapha had decided to illegally immigrate to Europe in 2013 when he was only 17 years old. He went through Libya, Italy and Slovenia, Rachida recounts, who has not heard from him since December 31, 2015.

Rachida then began searching for her brother. "I contacted his friends in Europe and one of them told me that my brother had gone to Gaziantep, a Turkish city bordering Syria, in April 2016," she details, suspecting that Moustapha is being held in the Iraqi prison of Nasiriya.

To read: Morocco Considers Mission to Aid Citizens Detained in Syria and Iraq Camps

Khadija Faouzi is luckier than Rachida. She at least knows where her son, Jawad Bouyafar, 24, is, with whom she sometimes talks on the phone from his prison in Syria. Jawad was a university student in Casablanca and asked his parents for money, saying he was going on summer vacation with friends to Tetouan and Agadir. "He wrote to us regularly as if he was in Morocco," she explains, but she later learned from agents that Jawad was being held in Syria.

In total, 724 Moroccans, including 217 men, 120 women and 387 minors, are currently being held in the camps in Syria and Iraq. For now, the Moroccan authorities have only been able to repatriate eight jihadist fighters from Syria for "humanitarian" reasons. This was in March 2019.