We must lock up IS fighters who return from Syria
THE liberation of the Syrian city of Raqqa is a triumph of international military cooperation which deserves rather more prominence than it has been given this week. Admittedly, little of the city remains habitable but until recently this was the capital of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS), the nerve centre from which it tried to launch its occupation of the Islamic world.
It was in Raqqa that stood “Hell Square” where IS thugs beheaded and threw from buildings opponents of the regime, along with gay people, smokers and anyone else who failed to conform to their theocratic strictures.
IS will linger for a while but deprived of its greatest stronghold there is no longer much question as to how the struggle will end. One of the most evil regimes ever to establish itself on Earth is itself facing the oblivion it promised all others.
Raqqa might look apocalyptic now but there will come a time when the city, like Beirut before it, recovers to become the great cultural and industrial city it once was. The decision of Britain and many other countries to intervene and come to the aid of local fighters has for once been vindicated.
That said, we now face a grave threat of a different kind: the mass return of European citizens who travelled to join IS in Syria or Iraq. According to EU security commissioner Sir Julian King, 8,000 of them are poised to return. Some are already here – including 400 in Britain.
ONE of them was Manchester bomber Salman Abedi, who committed his crime shortly after returning from Libya from where, it is believed, he had travelled to Syria. Some of the terrorists who killed 14 people in Spain in August are also believed to have returned from Syria.
It would be easy to assume that all members of an enemy power would be detained on arrival in Britain and assessed for what threat they pose, then either interned or tried for criminal offences. That is what happened at the beginning of the Second World War when 70,000 German and Austrian nationals were made to report for alien registration.
Those, such as refugees,