Moroccan authorities have arrested a Uighur in exile based on a Chinese terrorism warrant distributed by Interpol, according to information from Moroccan police and a rights group that tracks people detained by China.
Rights advocates fear that Idris Hasan — or Yidiresi Aishan, a Romanization of the name on his Chinese passport — is to be extradited to China, saying that the arrest is politically driven and part of a broader Chinese campaign to hunt down perceived dissidents outside its borders.
A Chinese citizen was arrested after landing at Mohammed V International Airport in Casablanca on Tuesday last week after arriving from Istanbul, Turkey, the Moroccan General Directorate for National Security said on Tuesday.
Photo: Reuters
He “was the subject of a red notice issued by Interpol due to his suspected belonging to an organization on the lists of terrorist organizations,” the directorate said.
The red notice — the equivalent of being put on Interpol’s most-wanted list — was issued at the request of China, which is seeking his extradition, the directorate said.
Moroccan authorities notified Interpol and the Chinese authorities about the arrest, and the Chinese citizen was referred to prosecutors pending the extradition procedure, it said.
Moroccan police did not publicly name the arrested man, but the non-governmental organization Safeguard Defenders identified him as Aishan — the group specializes in cases of people detained by China.
Aishan, a 33-year-old computer engineer and father of three, has been based in Turkey since 2012, where he worked as a Web designer and Uighur advocate, and has residency papers, his friend and colleague Abduweli Ayup said.
Aishan worked on a Uighur diaspora online newspaper and assisted other Uighur advocates in media outreach and collecting testimonies of abuse in Xinjiang.
After repeated arrests in Turkey, Aishan left Istanbul for Casablanca on Monday last week, Ayup said.
On Saturday, Aishan called his wife to say that he was being deported, said Ayup, who is in touch with Aishan’s family.
Interpol and the Chinese embassy in Morocco did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the arrest. The exact charges against him are unclear.
Morocco ratified an extradition treaty with China in 2017, among several such treaties that China has made over the past few years.
China has described its sweeping lockup of 1 million or more Uighurs and other largely Muslim minorities as a “war against terror,” after knifings and bombings by a small number of extremist Uighurs native to Xinjiang.
Researchers have said that many innocent people have been detained for going abroad or attending religious gatherings, among other reasons.
Safeguard Defenders has appealed to the Moroccan ambassadors in Washington and Brussels not to extradite Aishan.
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