Problem of captured IS fighters vexes U.S.

WASHINGTON — Hundreds of foreign Islamic State fighters have been captured in Syria, and what to do with them has become a problem for the Trump administration as it prepares to pull American troops from the country.

An administration official said determining the fate of these prisoners, who include Europeans and some U.S. citizens, is a priority as the U.S. lays the groundwork with allies to comply with President Donald Trump’s order to withdraw the 2,000 American troops from Syria. Those troops have worked alongside the U.S.-backed Syrian Defense Forces to fight IS since 2015.

The official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss private deliberations about policy and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that releasing the fighters would be “unacceptable” because of concerns that they could rejoin IS militants in Syria or elsewhere.

“This matters because SDF holds hundreds of IS fighters, including many European citizens, and they might go free if no solution is found,” said Bobby Chesney, a national security law expert at the University of Texas.

European nations have been reluctant to take back citizens with ties to IS, not wanting the legal challenge of prosecuting them or the potential security risk if they are released.

Moving former fighters to the United States poses some of the same challenges that Washington has faced with men detained at the military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Among the issues are whether it’s feasible to prosecute militants captured on the battlefields of northern Syria, according to experts.

“It’s one thing for the government to be very confident that an individual joined or tried to join ISIS. And sometimes it’s still another thing for the government to be able to mount confidently a criminal prosecution against that individual,” said Joshua Geltzer, a senior counterterrorism official under President Barack Obama.