Moroccan MPs check Human Rights of Prisoners in Iraq and Syria

Rabat – Several Members of Parliament from Morocco are preparing to pay Iraq and Syria a visit to bring back former “fighters,” offenders, prisoners of war, and all war participants. The MPs said that the visit is also to check on the prisoners’ conditions and ensure that their basic human rights are met.

Starting next week, the mission is set to learn the conditions lived by the women, children, and Moroccan citizens who are stuck in the centers of tension in both Iraq and Syria.

The MPs have demanded the President of Parliament coordinate with both Parliaments of Iraq and Syria to ensure the mission goes as planned.

The mission’s goal is to bring home mothers, women detainees, and women currently stuck in tense countries, considering that those women are Moroccan citizens above all. The mission also aims to visit prisons and all detention strongholds in coordination with Moroccan Diplomacy and approval of the hosting countries.

PMs have also demanded of the President of Morocco’s Parliament that all means of transportation, both inside and outside of Morocco, be provided to ensure their mission’s success.

The committee is presided over by Abdellatif Ouahbi, Party of Authenticity and Modernity (PAM) member. While Slimane El Omrani, a member of the Justice and Development Party (PJD), is the committee’s Vice President.

The committee was put together when Abdellatif Ouahbi demanded it saying: “The events that took place in many centers of tension in the Arab world, especially in Iraq and Syria, that have produced humanitarian tragedies, have obliged us as Moroccans and as a State to take responsibility towards our citizens who are involved in these wars that started to take new shapes of dissimilar and heterogenous disputes.” 

One of the mission’s most important goals is to bring home both the children taken from Morocco and those born during the wars that tormented the region. Those children, fathered by Moroccan and non-Moroccan fighters, are all considered Moroccan citizens and have either been orphaned or are simply lost or detained merely for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Once those children are brought home, priority will be given to ensure their physical and mental health are good to rehabilitate and incorporate them into the educational system and Moroccan social life.

When it comes to women, they will be divided into two groups. A group of civilians includes Moroccan women who are married to and have had children with either Moroccan or non-Moroccan fighters. Some of these women were either raped or forcefully married in “Marriage Jihad” and have had to stay subordinate to their husbands.

The second category, which includes women fighters who took part in the war, will be treated the same way male fighters are.

The committee is also demanding to know the steps the government is taking to ensure the protection of our internal national security and the measures it is going to take to ensure those people are exceptionally framed, educationally, psychologically, in terms of health, and socially.