UK urged to take Isis fighters back from Iraq and Syria

Antony Blinken has said that the continued detention of former ISIS fighters in Iraqi and Syrian camps is untenable, and more of them must be repatriated to their home countries.

Speaking at a summit of the international coalition against ISIS, the US secretary of state said that the United States continues to urge countries – including coalition partners – to repatriate, rehabilitate and, where applicable, prosecute its citizens.

Britain and France and Brit have so far resisted calls to bring back their citizens, fearing they have no way of reliably prosecuting them and imposing a major burden on the intelligence services.

Alternatively, Italy praised Italy, who hosted the conference, as one of the few western European nations to repatriate its citizens, and also hailed efforts by central Asian nations such as Kazakhstan, which he said had brought back 600 fighters and their family members and put them in rehabilitation programmes.

There are said to be 60,000 former ISIS supporters held at al-Hawl camp in northern Syria.

Belgium’s federal prosecution service recently announced that 14 Isis supporters would face trial this year for their alleged role in assisting the Paris attacks of November 2015 in which 130 people were killed. The man suspected of being the only surviving attacker, Salah Abdeslam, is to face trial in Paris in September.