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“Happy” to Return to Morocco, Brahim Saadoun “Wants to Draw Attention to the Difficult Situation in Ukraine”

Brahim Saadoun arrived in Morocco this Saturday evening, September 24, from Saudi Arabia, three days after his release by Russia thanks to Saudi mediation. 

The young 21-year-old student appeared smiling and in good health, was entitled to a warm welcome from his parents who rushed to him to hug him, under the flashes of the telephone cameras of the curious came to Mohammed V airport to attend the long-awaited event. 

According to our colleagues from Al Yaoum24, the authorities tried to “prevent” any contact Brahim Saadoun had with the media, by getting him out through a back door of the airport. 

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“I’m happy to come home after going through very difficult times,” the student said in an interview with AFP at his parents’ home in a working-class district of Casablanca. 

“I want to draw attention to the difficult situation in Ukraine and the struggle of its people in this painful period”, he pleaded, while thanking Saudi Arabia, the Turkish government as well as the Moroccan people “who joined in with us.”

Evoking “an indescribable feeling of joy”, Brahim Saadoun’s father also praised Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for his role in the release of his son. Brahim “has suffered from imprisonment but he will recover and get back to his studies,” he told AFP.

Born in Meknes in 2001, Brahim Saâdoun, son of a retired policeman, left for Ukraine in 2019 to study at the University of Aeronautics and Aerospace Sciences in Kyiv. In the summer of 2020, he joined the Ukrainian navy and obtained the nationality of his host country.

 Less than a year later, when the Russian forces launched their attack on Ukraine on February 24, Brahim Saâdoun was sent to the front to “fight”, according to the separatists supported by Moscow. The young student ended up being arrested on March 12 in Mariupol, in the Donetsk region, by pro-Russian separatist fighters, while he was wearing the uniform of the kyiv army. He will subsequently be sentenced to death for mercenary action on June 9, triggering a huge wave of reactions in Morocco but also internationally. 

The young man was finally released on Wednesday, September 21, after mediation led by Saudi Arabia and which allowed the release by Russia of 10 “combatants” including Brahim Saadoun, as part of an exchange of prisoners between Moscow and Kyiv.

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