“As many as 500 Britons have headed to Syria to fight in the past three years – far higher than the numbers who travelled to Iraq. The police and security services are understood to be monitoring around half of that number who have returned.” Why aren’t they monitoring the rest? And why were these men let back into the country in the first place? Simply because they’re citizens? (Are they even all citizens?) The British government has no compunction about banning counter-jihadists such as Pamela Geller and me from entering the country — why can’t it find some way to keep these jihadis out? Or would doing that be “Islamophobic” and enrage the Islamic supremacist groups before whom the government of Spineless Britannia cowers in abject fear and submission?
“Syria is now the biggest threat to Britain’s security,” by Christopher Hope and Tom Whitehead in the Telegraph, April 10 (thanks to Thomas Pellow):
The crisis in Syria has emerged as the biggest threat to Britain’s security, The Telegraph can disclose.
The threat to the UK from returning fighters from the Syrian civil war is now the same as that from al-Qaeda terrorists in the borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The increased risk will refocus attention on the decision by David Cameron – backed by MPs in the House of Commons – not to intervene as the Syrian conflict worsened last August.
For the past two years, British jihadists have been able to gain access bomb and weapons training as well as further radicalisation.
There are fears that British men who have been radicalised there are also being encouraged to return to the UK to carry out attacks here rather than staying to fight.
As many as 500 Britons have headed to Syria to fight in the past three years – far higher than the numbers who travelled to Iraq.
The police and security services are understood to be monitoring around half of that number who have returned. Some arrests have been made.
A senior Whitehall source told The Telegraph: “We are seeing a growing threat to the UK from terrorist groups in Syria.
“The threat to the UK comes from a range of countries and groups but Syria is perhaps the biggest challenge right now.”
Confirmation of the escalating concern was made by an additional paragraph to the Government’s assessment on the threat from foreign fighters published on the Security Service’s website.
It says: “Over the last two years, we have seen Syria become an attractive destination for UK extremists wishing to engage in violent jihad.
“The nature of the conflict in Syria and the emergence of the Al Nusrah Front, which has declared its allegiance to Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, is leading to the country becoming an increasingly significant potential source of future threats to the UK and UK interests overseas.”…