‘UK Isil fighters in Syria should be killed there’

BRITISH Isil fighters should be killed in Syria rather than be allowed to return to the UK, a government minister has said.

Rory Stewart said converts who left Britain to fight for the terror group were guilty of horrific acts and the only way of dealing with them was to kill them “in almost every case”.

His remarks come just days after Max Hill QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said young people who travelled to Syria after being “brainwashed” should be allowed to come home and rejoin society.

Mr Hill told the BBC that it was not worth losing a generation of young people who “naively” went to join Isil before attempting to come back to the UK.

Yesterday, Mr Stewart, the International Development minister, said the question of how to deal with UK extremists was “very difficult”. But asked by BBC Radio 5 Live’s John Pienaar if they had “brought on themselves what they are about to get?”, he said: “These are people who have essentially moved away from any kind of allegiance towards the British Government.

“They are absolutely dedicated, as members of the Islamic State, towards the creation of a caliphate, they believe in an extremely hateful doctrine which involves killing themselves, killing others and trying to use violence and brutality to create an eighth-century, or seventh-century, state.

“So I’m afraid we have to be serious about the fact that these people are a serious danger to us, and unfortunately the only way of dealing with them will be, in almost every case, to kill them.”

Around half of the estimated 850 Britons believed to have gone to join the extremists are now believed to be back in the UK. There are fears more will follow as the terror organisation loses territory in Iraq and Syria.

Coalition forces are reported to have given a list of names and photographs to Kurdish fighters on the ground so that they can identify and kill foreign fighters who are seen as a security threat before they have the chance to escape.

However, this could allow room for fighters identified as less serious offenders to be allowed to return home.

Mr Hill, who called for former Isil fighters to be allowed to reintegrate back into the UK, was supported by Andrew Rosindell, Conservative MP, who sits on the Commons foreign affairs committee. He said: “The presumption should be that all people who went to join IS should be dealt with by the criminal justice system unless there is a good reason.”

But Mr Stewart said “these are people who are executing people in the back of their heads”, adding that fighters could expect to be killed, given the threat they posed to British security.

‘These people are a serious danger… the only way of dealing with them will be, in almost every case, to kill them’