Britain rejects Trump’s jihadist repatriation call

LONDON: The British government yesterday rebuffed US President Donald Trump’s call to take back alleged UK jihadists captured in Syria and try them at home. Trump tweeted on Sunday that Washington was “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”. His comments came with diehard Islamic State group fighters trapped in the last pocket of their crumbling “caliphate” in Syria. Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokesman said the fighters should be put on trial in places where they committed their crimes. “Foreign fighters should be brought to justice in accordance with due legal process in the most appropriate jurisdiction,” Downing Street said. “Where possible, this should be in the region where the crimes had been committed.”

The spokesman added that London continued “to work closely with our international partners on this”. US allies have been grappling for weeks with

what to do with foreign fighters detained in the war-ravaged country by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. The issue’s urgency was raised in Britain after a London school girl who joined the Islamic State in 2015 resurfaced in a Syrian refugee camp last week. Shamima Begum told British media she wanted to come back to London to raise a baby she gave birth to this weekend. UK security officials said they could not block Begum’s return since she had never been convicted of any crimes. But they did not rule out prosecuting her upon her arrival.

Meanwhile, Germany vowed yesterday to prosecute German IS fighters but warned that it would be “extremely difficult” to organize the

repatriation of European nationals from Syria, after US President Donald Trump called on allies to take back alleged jihadists. Syria’s US-backed Kurdish forces, which are battling Islamic State group jihadists in their last redoubt in eastern Syria, hold hundreds of suspected foreign IS fighters and the calls for their reluctant home countries to take them back have grown in urgency. “We must be able to ensure that prosecution is possible,” Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen told Bild daily. Underlining the difficulties however of putting the ex-fighters on trial, the minister noted that there is “no government in Syria with which we have a sensible relationship”. —Agencies