Take back jihadis or they’ll be set free, Trump tells EU
DONALD Trump has demanded EU countries ‘take back’ 800 Islamic State fighters – or they will roam free.
As the militant group was on the brink of defeat, the US President urged his European allies to repatriate jihadis captured on the battlefield and put them on trial.
The explosive comments caused a split in the British government, with some ministers arguing Britain should take responsibility for the fighters and others that they should be left in the Middle East.
Saying it was ‘time for others to step up’, Mr Trump yesterday warned that if US allies did not accept jihadis back on their soil, the extremists would ‘permeate Europe’.
Britain has at least six fighters languishing in secret jails in northern Syria, including two members of the notorious ‘Beatles’ gang. Dozens of British jihadi wives – including Shamima Begum – and their children are also thought to be in refugee camps in the region.
Yesterday Mr Trump tweeted: ‘The United States is asking Britain, France, Germany and other European allies to take back over 800 Isis fighters that we captured in Syria and put them on trial.
‘The US does not want to watch as these Isis fighters permeate Europe, which is where they are expected to go. We do so much, and spend so much – time for others to step up and do the job that they are so capable of doing. We are pulling back after 100% Caliphate victory!’
Britain’s defence minister Tobias Ellwood backed Mr Trump’s comments, saying the UK should take back homegrown extremists or face the ‘danger’ of them waging war elsewhere. He said: ‘We cannot allow foreign fighters to disperse, only to regroup and continue their poisonous cause elsewhere.
‘If some are UK nationals then we cannot ignore our responsibility to ensure they face justice. Let’s not forget many were radicalised here in the UK.’
However, a government source last night said Mr Trump could ‘huff and puff all he likes’ but Britain would not allow jihadis to return from Syria.
They added: ‘That would be rendition and would undermine any case we have in a court.
‘We don’t have an extradition treaty with Syria and we don’t recognise the Syrian Democratic Forces as a state… so we couldn’t if we wanted to.’
Britain’s foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt has been doing his utmost to stop the fighters going back to the UK, sources said. It is understood he is backed by defence secretary Gavin Williamson and others.
But former head of the British Army, General Richard Dannatt contradicted the official government stance and backed Trump.
He told Sky News: ‘If there are, as I think he’s correct to say, a large number of foreign fighters in captivity in Syria who originate from countries like the UK, then they are our citizens and we have a responsibility to act responsibly towards them and I think that means that they have got to come back to this country.’
And Raffaello Pantucci, an associate fellow at King’s College London’s International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, said: ‘The key point is, Donald Trump is not wrong about this. They are British citizens so we should take them back. You cannot just say it is too difficult so let’s hope the problem goes away or let the US handle it.’
Ministers are concerned that if they fly the jihadis back, they may end up walking free, as the evidence against them might not secure convictions in British courts.
Mr Pantucci admitted this was a ‘danger’, saying: ‘The difficulty is the evidential basis and the way they have been held make it easy for case to be thrown out of court.’
But Tory MP Crispin Blunt, former chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, said it would be ‘selfish’ of the UK to leave Kurdish forces to handle the issue.
He said: ‘We are responsible for UK citizens. It is also a pretty poor way to treat our allies who have paid the bloody price of defeating Isis in Syria, losing 8,000 dead and 5,000 permanently maimed, and are having to rebuild the country smashed by Isis and the conflict, to dump them with this problem.
‘Problem won’t just go away’
How can the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria be expected to imprison them, investigate them, release them if appropriate, try and sentence them if not, when they have other massively more pressing priorities, not least survival with Turkey on one side and Assad on the other?’
Yesterday Britain’s home secretary Sajid Javid was forced to concede he could not stop all jihadis and their wives returning to Britain. ‘There are those who we are unable to deprive of their British citizenship who may seek to make their way back to the UK,’ he wrote in the Sunday Times.
It is thought the US could put on trial those jihadis who are responsible for killing American citizens.
US prosecutors are believed to be drawing up plans to try two Londoners accused of being members of the ‘Beatles’ gang – believed to be an Isis kidnap and execution cell – at an American court.
Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh will likely receive a fasttrack trial at a court near Washington which specialises in convicting traitors. They may face terrorismrelated charges by the summer.
They could face the death penalty or life behind bars if they can be directly linked to the beheadings of western hostages in Syria.
Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander in Afghanistan, said that rather than bring jihadis to the UK, it was ‘best for the US to deal with them using their far more robust judicial system’. The UK Home Office did not comment.