DR ‹ › Morocco is preparing a plan to repatriate its nationals who fought with the Islamic State group (ISIS) in Syria and were recently transferred by the United States to detention facilities in Iraq, a senior security official told Reuters on Thursday. Morocco «is currently developing an action plan on this matter ... taking into consideration the diversity of the population targeted by the procedure, namely the fighters, as well as the women who lived in the SDF camps in Syria, in addition to their children», the official said. The move follows the U.S. decision to relocate thousands of detainees after the collapse of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which had been guarding detention centers in northeastern Syria. According to the same source, 1,667 Moroccan foreign fighters traveled to Syria and Iraq. Among them, 244 were detained in prisons run by the SDF in northeastern Syria, while 279 former fighters have already returned to Morocco. The official added that 269 Moroccan women remain in the conflict zone along with 627 minors, while 134 women and 354 children are still held in SDF-run camps. Since the start of the Syrian conflict, 125 women have returned to Morocco. Morocco previously repatriated eight fighters in March 2019 who had been detained by the SDF. They were later tried in Morocco and are now serving prison sentences ranging from 13 to 18 years on terrorism charges. Under Moroccan law, joining jihadist groups abroad is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Since its creation in 2015, Morocco's counter-terrorism agency, the Central Bureau of Judicial Investigations (BCIJ), has dismantled dozens of militant cells and arrested more than 1,000 suspected jihadists.
