Third Wave of Deportations Cancelled

Perhaps I was wrong.

From MoroccoBoard.com:

At the end of last week, at least a dozen American Christian evangelicals who have settled in Morocco and who had received verbal orders of deportation for proselytizing were informed by the Moroccan police or by the U.S. consulate in Casablanca, that these deportation orders had been canceled. The canceled deportation orders were part of an apparent third wave of expulsion of Christians from the country for "proselytizing" and "attempting to break the faith of Muslims" two offenses covered by the Moroccan penal code that could have lead to a court trial which the Moroccan authorities wanted to avoid.

Since last March, Morocco has expelled more than a hundred Christians, half of them Americans-including the Casablanca-based-George Washington Academy founder and director Jack Rusenko and two senior school administrators. 


The abrupt course reversal of the Moroccan Ministry of Interior is due to the forceful reaction of the U.S. administration. According to Spanish daily El Pais, the US Ambassador in Rabat, Samuel Kaplan, called the Minister of Interior, Mr. Taieb Cherkaoui to protest and to ask for a meeting. At the same time, according to El Pais, the U.S. Embassy is urging its citizens not to obey the verbal orders by the Moroccan police and hold out for for written expulsion orders so that they can eventually contest them in a Moroccan court.

Kaplan strong reaction was probably due to the hearing by the U.S. Congress Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission held last week and co-chaired by Republican Rep. Tom Wolf (R) of Virginia, on the expulsion of US Christians from Morocco.