Morocco Prepares to Repatriate Hundreds of ISIS Families from Turkey

Turkey has started expelling foreign activists and families of members of the Islamic State (IS) group in recent months. The Turkish authorities are coordinating, with their Moroccan counterparts, these expulsions for a number of Moroccans who went to join IS. Among them are women and children, according to Hespress.

At the end of October, the director of the Central Bureau of Judicial Investigations (BCIJ), Abdelhak Khiame, had estimated that the relatives of jihadists were "not terrorists" and cannot "in any way be blamed". 1,659 Moroccans have joined the Islamic State group or other jihadist organizations. 742 were killed in combat, according to estimates.

Given the difficult conditions in which the detainees live, the Kurdish forces continue to call on the international community for a judicial institution to be established on the spot, to try the Daesh jihadists. Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, on the issue, asked the various countries on June 24 last that the family members of jihadists captured or killed in Syria and Iraq be "repatriated, unless they are prosecuted for crimes".

For his part, even if the human rights defender, Abdelilah al-Khodari, affirms that "the Moroccan state is morally, humanly and legally obliged to receive its children despite all that they have committed", he calls for their movements to be closely monitored so that "their extremist convictions do not influence others", reports the same source.