Children of British men and women who went to Syria to fight for ISIS could become “serious terrorists”, the chairman of an independent counter-terrorism commission has claimed.
With up to 40 children of UK citizens trapped in Syria, the British government had to take the responsibility for repatriating and re-educating them, said Sir Declan Morgan, a retired judge who led work on the report on the UK adopting a different approach to terrorism.
He said the Syrian state had chosen not to accept responsibility for the group. “That means they are effectively stateless and the danger is that these children are actually going to turn out to be serious terrorists,” he said, speaking at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London.
“We can sit back and hope we're not around when all of this comes to pass but we really need to get real about the fact that it is something that as a state, we have a responsibility to address.”
The children are mostly aged 10 or younger; their parents are an estimated 10 British men and 15 to 20 British women who are believed to be in camps or other detention centres in Syria.
Dominic Grieve, Britain’s former attorney general and one of the report’s authors speaking at Rusi, said it was “worth bearing in mind that the United States, Canada and Australia” had all managed the process of repatriation.
“The United Kingdom really stands out as the one country that is refusing to do this, and I agree entirely with what that was just said about the potential long-term consequences."
He later told The National the former ISIS Britons were “a problem coming down the track” for the UK and while some of the men were committed terrorists, there “really is a serious concern that their children could turn out that way, too”.
Other European states have taken back more 1,200 people, almost half of those by France, which has caused some tension in the country.
Among others from Britain who joined ISIS were Mohammed Emwazi. He was one of the gang of four “Beatles” who beheaded several western hostages and was killed in a US air strike in 2015.
Shamima Begum was one of three schoolgirls who left London for Syria in 2015 aged 15. She had three children in Syria, all of whom died. She is in a long-running legal battle to regain her citizenship after it was revoked by the Theresa May government on national security grounds in 2019.
More than 900 people from Britain travelled to Syria during the civil war that began in 2011, with the majority joining ISIS. Of those not killed, about half are thought to have returned home. There are 18 children and three women from Al Hol and Al Roj camps in Syria who were formally repatriated by the UK following the ISIS’ collapse in 2019.
But a report by the Independent Commission on Counter-Terrorism Law, Policy and Practice deemed the UK’s approach to the remaining 70 to be “increasingly untenable” with camp conditions in Syria documented by the UN as “inhuman, dangerous, and degrading”.
Many women and children were victims of “coercion, trafficking, or exploitation” and some had potentially been coerced into terror activity.
Therefore, the British government should adopt a repatriation policy that would be in “the best interests of the children”, the report said.
Other countries had demonstrated that structured repatriation “combined with prosecution where appropriate” along “robust rehabilitation and reintegration programmes can effectively manage security risks while upholding human rights”.
“A coherent, humane and security-conscious repatriation strategy would strengthen compliance with international obligations, and promote long-term public safety and social stability,” the report said.
On Tuesday a teenager was charged with a terrorism offence, having been accused of attempting to travel to Syria to join ISIS after an arrest was made at London's Gatwick Airport.
The Metropolitan Police said Chafik Aziz, 18, of south London, was charged on Tuesday under terrorism laws after an investigation led by Counter Terrorism Policing London.
Meanwhile, a German court on Tuesday sentenced three Syrian men to prison for involvement in a foreign terrorist group during the civil war after a trial that lasted more than a year.
The three defendants, identified only as Amer Tarak A., Sohail A. and Basel O., received sentences from four and a half to nearly 10 years at court in Munich.
All three belonged to an armed rebel group called Liwa Jund al-Rahman, which Amer Tarak A. allegedly founded, and two were also found guilty of war crimes.
The group fought against Syrian president at the time Bashar Al Assad and later merged with ISIS.
