US: take back your jihadists
THE US wants Britain and other allies to take responsibility for putting their captured jihadists on trial, potentially setting them on a collision course over the fate of the two Isil “Beatles”.
The Trump administration is urging the UK and other coalition members fighting Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to help deal with the growing number of foreign fighters being held by Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), saying the militants should be turned over to face justice in their home countries.
The Us-backed SDF is holding hundreds of foreign fighters, including Alexanda Kotey, 34, and El Shafee Elsheikh, 29, from London, whose detention was revealed last week, and the Oxford schoolboy-turned-muslim convert Jack Letts, known as “Jihadi Jack”.
“We’re working with the coalition on foreign fighter detainees, and generally expect these detainees to return
to their country of origin for disposition,” said Kathryn Wheelbarger, a senior Pentagon official.
Gavin Williamson, the Defence Secretary, was last night understood to be standing by his comments that jihadists should not return. A Whitehall source told The Daily Telegraph: “The day these barbaric terrorists turned their back on their country in pursuit of an evil agenda of bloodshed and slaughter, they forfeited their right to return. They ... should pay the price for their crimes in Syria.”
Jim Mattis, the US defence secretary, is expected to press the issue in Rome today with his European counterparts.
Kotey and Elsheikh were arrested by the SDF as they tried to flee to Turkey. Together they make up half of an Isil cell that tortured and beheaded Western hostages. They were nicknamed “The Beatles”, because of their British accents.
US officials yesterday admitted putting the two in the Guantánamo Bay detention facility was not an option.
But most nations, including the US, would be unwilling to take back detainees unless they have the evidence to prosecute them, and that is often difficult to collect in battlefield captures.