The government should consider repatriating British members of the Islamic State group (IS) who are being held in Syrian detention camps, the government’s independent terrorism legislation reviewer Jonathan Hall KC has said.
Mr Hall’s comments come after Donald Trump’s incoming counter-terrorism chief, Sebastian Gorka, said that if the UK wanted to be seen as a “serious ally” of the US it should take back its citizens who joined IS.
One Briton who travelled 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 coming back to the UK”.
In an interview with the Times, Gorka said that “any nation which wishes to be seen to be a serious ally and friend of the most powerful nation in the world should act in a fashion that reflects that serious commitment” when asked if the UK should be forced to take IS members back.
“That is doubly so for the UK which has a very special place in President Trump’s heart and we would all wish to see the ‘special relationship’ fully re-established,” he said.
Since the fall of IS in 2019, thousands of people linked to the group – mostly women and children – have been detained in camps in northern Syria.
Since the toppling of former President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, there are fears the upheaval could threaten the security of the detention camps.
Ms Begum is among the prisoners in such camps, after travelling to Syria as a 15-year-old to support IS.
She married an Islamic State fighter soon after arriving and went on to have three children, none of whom survived.
Her UK citizenship was stripped on national security grounds in 2019 and she has exhausted her 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 look to the bigger picture about the balance of national security.
“Repatriation would not be moral absolution, if someone came back it wouldn’t prevent them from potentially being prosecuted for what they’ve done,” he said.
“It could be quite a pragmatic decision in the overall interests of national security to bring someone back.
“There is obviously some national security benefit of leaving people there because you don’t have to monitor them,” he told the programme.
“On the other hand, there haven’t yet been any attacks in Europe by anyone who has been repatriated in this way and if they are left there… and then they escape, they would be much more dangerous, actually, to the UK.”
The US and many countries in Europe have repatriated citizens from Syrian detention camps before putting them on trial 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 UK national”.
He said that the government would “act in our security interests. And many of those in those camps are dangerous, are radicals.”
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has also said Ms Begum should not return.
“Citizenship means committing to a country and wanting its success. It’s not an international travel document for crime tourism,” she said.
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