Crocodile tears won’t blind us to truth

THE ‘plight’ of former ISIS fighters and their families continues to be highlighted. Britishborn Shamima Begum, 19, has just given another interview claiming she had been brainwashed and regretted ‘everything’.

Meanwhile, in a BBC interview, former British jihadi Hamza Parvez complained he had not fully realised what he was signing up to when he left his comfortable life in West London to join ISIS.

All crocodile tears. But what really adds insult to injury is the way these individuals still command the spotlight when the victims of their vile crimes struggle to get any coverage or help at all. In particular, the Yazidi people of Northern Iraq.

ISIS fighters systematically raped, tortured and butchered members of this peaceful people in a frenzy of violence that led the United Nations to declare an official genocide in 2014. Women and children were forced into sexual slavery, with so-called ISIS ‘brides’ complicit in their suffering.

Many are still enslaved. Others are in tented camps in Kurdistan, isolated and slowly dying. And yet all we ever seem to hear about are these ex-extremists who, now that their murderous gap year is over, want us to welcome them home with open arms and open wallets.

As Dr Paul Stott, from the Henry Jackson Society think-tank, said: ‘It must feel very strange to the Yazidis that people travelled from Britain to join the group responsible for their repression, and stranger still that some British politicians regard British ISIS members as, themselves, victims.’

There is a simple solution. Give the British citizenships rejected by ISIS fighters to those whose lives they destroyed. Nothing can undo the horror visited on the Yazidis — but it would be some kind of justice.