Ross Clark

have travelled to join IS around half have already returned. A mere 14 have been jailed. The rest have been allowed to slip back into society – free to execute the instructions which have been given to them by their former masters, to commit terror attacks against the population at large.

It is not possible for security services to keep tabs on so many suspects. MI5 has only enough resources to keep round- the- clock surveillance on up to 50 terror suspects at a time. We are therefore at the mercy of several hundred people – just hoping that they are disillusioned with IS and will refuse to carry out its instructions.

Few expect or would want Britain to descend to the kind of summary justice meted out by IS. We helped draft the UN Charter of Human Rights and European Convention on Human Rights in the late 1940s and early 1950s and should respect them. But that doesn’t mean obeying the perverse interpretations put on them by some human rights lawyers now – and which would have appalled those who drafted the original rules.

We were under no illusions as to what to do with traitors who had left Britain at the outbreak of the Second War and thrown in their lot with the Germans. William Joyce – otherwise known as Lord Haw Haw – was tried and executed for aiding the Nazi war effort through his propaganda broadcasts.

While we no longer have the death penalty there is no excuse for not treating British IS fighters with similar resolve. We can’t leave them stateless but that doesn’t mean we can’t cancel their passports, making it difficult for them to travel anywhere. They sided with a pretend state – let them stay there until it is wiped from the map for good.

If they do somehow pop up in Britain they should without exception be prosecuted. They have committed a criminal offence by the very virtue of travelling to IS- controlled territory. True, we don’t want them in the general prison system where they might spread their poisonous ideology to others. What we need is an offshore facility where they can be held until we can be absolutely sure that the threat posed by IS has been eliminated.

Operation Constrain is objectionable for reasons other than the danger it presents to society. Installing IS terrorists in council homes and showering them with benefits plays into the naïve argument that people are attracted to terror through poverty. Time and again terrorists have turned out to come from middle class homes.

MANY have university degrees. Some were radicalised as students while enjoying an education subsidised from the public purse. Many had good jobs before being attracted to IS. Some already were in social housing.

Manchester bomber Salman Abedi had been a student at Salford University. He was raised in a middle class family home in Manchester. He planned his suicide attack and built his bomb in a council flat which he rented for cash – hardly the picture of someone driven into the arms of IS through destitution.

The Government should strangle Operation Constrain before it has begun and treat IS fighters recruited from Britain as the serious criminals they are.

‘ Treat British IS fighters as traitors’