British Jihadis (Iraq and Syria)

Debate between Lord Walney and Anneliese Dodds

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Commons Chamber

[John Woodcock]

I guess I am, but can the hon. Gentleman come up with something that would persuade another Government to take such a UK citizen? I would like them never to set foot back here again, but I know that we would never allow a foreign resident who had committed a terrorist atrocity to stay in our country.

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

There are individuals being kept in jails in, for example, the Kurdish-controlled areas of Syria who have not yet been tried for any activity. They are being held there, but the British Government refuse to interact with them on the grounds that they are in Syria, even though they cannot leave. Does my hon. Friend understand that there is also a problem for the people who have not yet been tried but whom the British Government do not seem willing to take any responsibility for?

[John Woodcock]

My hon. Friend and I have spoken about her constituent and the distress caused to her family. It is important that there is due process that is transparent both for the individuals involved and the public.

Lest anyone doubt the relationship between travelling to jihad conflict zones and radicalisation, it is worth noting that research from the Institute for Global Change, which surveyed a sample of prominent jihadis from the middle east and Africa, found that nearly two thirds had fought in one of the three major hubs of jihadi conflict over the past 30 years. Here in the UK, Salman Abedi travelled to Libya shortly before his terrorist attack, which killed 22 people at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester last year. Two of the London Bridge attackers, Khuram Butt and Youssef Zaghba, had expressed an interest in travelling to Syria to join Daesh.

Are more than 400 of those returning individuals in jail or going through the court system? We simply do not know, because the Government will not release the figures, despite repeated requests. There is strong demand from the public to know how many who travelled to fight foreign jihad are currently free in British communities. Those men and women are escaping justice, despite having been prepared to fight British troops in the name of a sickeningly evil cause. If they are not locked up or deradicalised, they are potentially able to import back to British streets brutal killing techniques learned on the battlefield. The Government must know what the figure is. It is simple to collate, and they were prepared to give it back in May 2016 when Advocate General Lord Keen responded to a parliamentary question stating that, at that point, there had been 54 successful prosecutions of returnees from Iraq and Syria, with 30 more cases ongoing.

The refusal to update the number of prosecutions is fuelling the suspicion that in fact only a fraction of returnees are being charged because it is often too difficult to amass sufficient evidence that is admissible in an open court. That suspicion extends to suspected terror suspects who are deported back to the UK. Here, the lack of prosecution cannot be attributed to someone slipping into the country unnoticed, difficult though that in itself should be. Deportees are directly handed back to the UK authorities by another nation. They should be delivered straight into the judicial system and made to pay for their crime, but how many are? Again, at present we do not know because the Government have claimed that they do not hold the information in this form. That is simply not credible.

Last month, I was granted special access to a British woman in a removal centre in Izmir, Turkey. The Turkish authorities wished to deport her back to the UK with her two young children. I hope that the Minister will share my concern over the detention of those children, who are aged just three and one, and will report to the woman’s Member of Parliament about what they are doing on this case.

The Turkish authorities gave me the identities of six other British nationals, two adults and four children, who they said had been deported from the Izmir removal centre in the past 12 months. In speaking to the Security Minister before this debate, I was asked not to name these individuals on security grounds. On this occasion, I am content to agree to that request, but I will say this: it comes to something when a foreign country is prepared to be more forthcoming to a British MP about the terror threat posed by particular British citizens than Her Majesty’s own Government.

Some will claim that this obfuscation is based on a laudable need to maintain a deterrent effect rather than on a desire to save the Government from embarrassment; that it is better to remain vague because future generations are less likely to be deterred from following the next call to global jihad if they know how few of their brothers and sisters have been jailed for previous attempts. Yet such a view surely grossly underestimates the sophistication of the jihadis’ communication capacity. If British justice is falling short, Daesh, al-Qaida and whatever is the next strain of this evil perversion will be able to get that message out to potential recruits. Will the Government take this opportunity to be more transparent on this vital issue?

In her response, will the Minister answer the following questions: how many UK nationals deported back to the UK have been subject to a managed return because of their suspected support for ISIS, as described in the Home Secretary’s response to me here on 8 January; how many of those have been charged with a terror-related offence; how many of the aforementioned “approximately 850 UK-linked individuals” were deported back to the UK; how many of those have been charged with a terror-related offence; and what is the total number of these 850 who have been charged with a terror-related offence?

Finally, rather than attempting to hide the weakness of our legal system in regard to returning jihadis, will the Government consider the following proposal to strengthen it? The Home Secretary has already said that she will consider extending the period of pre-charge detention to allow the authorities more time to prepare a case, but will the Government consider the steps that have been taken in Australia where it has been made an offence to travel without a verifiable legitimate reason to certain designated terror hotspots—as Iraq and Syria were while that conflict was taking place. The declared area offence law is in its infancy in Australia, having only been on the statute book since 2014, yet the independent reviewer of terror legislation there has just recommended that it be extended for a further five years. Surely there is value in following our ally to create our own UK jihadi travel ban, placing the burden on the suspected terrorist to give proof of legitimate purpose if he or she travels to a designated conflict zone.