Britain should consider allowing IS members to return, terror watchdog says

The government’s independent terrorism law critic Jonathan Hall Casey has said the government should consider repatriating British members of the Islamic State group (IS) held in Syrian detention camps.

Mr Hall’s comments come after Donald Trump’s incoming counter-terrorism chief, Sebastian Gorka, said Britain must stop its citizens from joining IS if it wants to be seen as a “serious ally” of the US. Should be taken back.

One British woman who traveled to Syria to support the jihadist movement was Shamima Begum, who left London as a teenager in 2015 and was stripped of her UK citizenship in 2019.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy has insisted Ms Begum “will not be returning to the UK”.

In an interview with the Times, Gorka said that “any nation that wants to be seen as a serious ally and friend of the world’s most powerful nation must act in a way that reflects that serious commitment” when He was asked whether Britain should be forced to withdraw IS members.

“This goes doubly so for Britain, which holds a very special place in President Trump’s heart and we would all like to see the ‘special relationship’ fully re-established,” he said.

Since the fall of IS in 2019, thousands of people associated with the group – mostly women and children – have been detained in camps in northern Syria.

Since the fall of former President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, There are fears that the unrest could threaten the security of the detention camps,

Ms Begum is one of the prisoners in such camps, having traveled to Syria at the age of 15 to support IS.

As soon as she arrived, she married an Islamic State fighter and had three children, none of whom survived.

In 2019, he was stripped of his British citizenship on national security grounds. has exhausted his legal means of appeal,

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight, Mr Hall said that while Ms Begum’s story is a compelling one, politicians should focus on the bigger picture about the balance of national security.

He said, “Repatriation would not be moral immunity; if someone came back it would not stop them from potentially being prosecuted for what they did.”

“Bringing someone back could be quite a practical decision in the overall interest of national security.

“There’s clearly some national security benefit to leaving people there because you don’t have to monitor them,” he said at the event.

“On the other hand, in Europe there have not yet been any attacks by anyone sent back in this way and if they were left there… and then they escaped, they would, in fact, be more dangerous. UK.”

Many countries in America and Europe have brought back their citizens from Syrian detention camps. Before prosecuting and imprisoning them.

During a discussion of Gorka’s comments on Thursday, David Lammy told Good Morning Britain that Ms Begum’s case had gone through the courts and that she was “not a British citizen”.

He said the government “will act in our security interests. And many of those camps are dangerous, radicalized.”

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch also said Ms Begum should not return.

“Citizenship means being committed to a country and wishing for its success. It is not an international travel document for crime tourism,” he said.