UK will not put officials at risk to rescue Isis Britons
England - The security minister, Ben Wallace, has said he would not put officials’ lives at risk to rescue UK citizens who went to Syria and Iraq to join Islamic State Islamic, insisting “actions have consequences”.
“I’m not putting at risk British people’s lives to go looking for terrorists or former terrorists in a failed state,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today program. He was speaking on Thursday after it was revealed Shamima Begum, one of three pupils from Bethnal Green, east London, who left to join Isis four years ago, told the Times she wanted to return to the UK. Speaking from a refugee camp in north-east Syria, Begum, who is nine months pregnant with her third child, told the newspaper: “All I want to do is come home to Britain.”
Wallace said that as a British citizen, Begum had a right to return home, but anyone who joined Isis should expect to be investigated, interviewed and “at the very least prosecuted” on their return. There are currently no British diplomats in Syria because of security risks. If Begum wanted to return to the UK, she would have “to make her way to Turkey or Iraq to consular services there”, he added. Questioned on whether the fact that Begum was 15 when she ran away might generate sympathy from the Home Office, Wallace said: “People know what they’re getting into. This is a terrorist group, one of the worst ever in the world, that butchers people and has been responsible for the deaths of dozens of British citizens.”
Sir Peter Fahy, a former chief constable of Greater Manchester police, told Today: “The biggest challenge if she did come back will be how the police will keep her safe and how she wouldn’t be some sort of lightning rod for both Islamic and farright extremists. “If it is the case that Shamima Begum is trying to return to the UK, it is now a matter for the UK police, security services and the Foreign Office, who will rightly need to consider public safety and our national security in cases such as these.”
(The Guardian)