Scores of jihadi wives and children ‘on way back to Britain’
SCORES of jihadi wives and their children are planning to return to the UK after being captured in Syria following the defeat of Islamic State.
As many as 80 women and children, including members of the UK’s biggest suspected female terror cell, are expected to arrive in the country imminently, it is claimed.
Others will return by the end of the year, one of the women told relatives, as the organisation’s so-called caliphate is razed to the ground.
The terror cell is believed to include two sisters from east London, a white convert daughter of a former British Army paratrooper and an IT graduate whose mother works in the NHS.
They married jihadist fighters in Syria and have links to some of the world’s most infamous terrorists, including London-born Mohammed Emwazi, known as Jihadi John, according to a Sunday Times investigation.
Last night security sources told the Mail that only around five women were actually being held in custody by Kurdish forces in Syria. Others are planning to return because they believe Britain will let them in on the grounds they did not engage in terrorism.
One of the women claimed she recently had her British passport handed back and that officials in the UK had issued her child with new travel documents. She said she expects to be DNA-tested to prove she is the child’s mother.
Government sources denied suggestions they were handing back passports to jihadi brides.
The father of Natalie Bracht, one of the women believed to be in detention, pleaded for her to return. Former British soldier John Brown said: ‘Everybody deserves a second chance.’
At least 900 Britons, including up to 150 women, are thought to have joined jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq. Some 360 Britons remain in the region and are a national security concern. It is difficult for the UK government to mount a successful prosecution case against jihadi wives because they may not have taken up arms themselves. An official said: ‘The vast majority of those returning to Britain from Syria are women and children. The more concerning cases – particularly the men – have not been returning. We will speak to everyone as they may have been involved in terrorist activity.’
Prisons in the Kurdish-controlled areas of Syria are said to be overcrowded with hundreds of foreign fighters.
There is no clear British policy on the fate of UK nationals captured in Syria and Iraq.
But Abdul Karim Omar, a Kurdish leader in charge of the repatriation of foreigners, said: ‘We want to hand them over. We will not let them stay here.’ Gavin Williamson, the Defence Secretary, has called for British IS fighters to be hunted down and killed abroad. He told the Daily Mail last year: ‘A dead terrorist can’t cause any harm to Britain.’
The Foreign Office said it was ‘difficult to confirm the whereabouts and status’ of British nationals in Syria, adding: ‘Anyone who travels to Syria is putting themselves in considerable danger.’
‘We will not let them stay here’