European ISIS fighters must return home to face trial in their own countries. However, authorities in the European Union are reluctant to take them back.
The reluctance stems from fabricated public opinion, stressing that people are afraid that more attacks will follow if these fighters are brought back.
Pieter Van Ostaeyen, one of Belgium’s most experienced analysts of international terrorist groups, told Anadolu Agency, that the [prison] sentences in Belgium are low,” referring to the maximum five years for membership in a terrorist organization.
Billie Jeanne Brownlee, a lecturer in Middle East Politics at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, said European ISIS fighters are European citizens and have the right to return to their countries.
European ISIS fighters need to return to their home countries, undergo trials, and effective methods of support and re-integration need to be in place for them and their families.
EU countries need to re-think their policies towards mercenary groups and the rising hatred towards Muslims that we are witnessing on a daily basis,” she said, stressing that this is the most effective and long-term strategy to eradicate the problem at its roots.
He said it would be a very bad idea to extradite them to Iraq, where they would likely receive a death sentence, for killing thousands of innocent women and children.
What we definitely should avoid is that the SDF and YPG set those mass murderers free after the Americans pull out.
European countries should set up an international tribunal where all ISIS members would be tried according to the same set of agreed rules and ‘principals’. These terrorist mercenaries, are often sentenced to fairly short prison terms in their own countries as it is hard to prove their roles in terrorist groups abroad.
Earlier, the US regime asked European countries to take back foreign terrorist fighters for ISIS and put them on trial. However, Europe has been reluctant to reclaim home-grown ISIS terrorists.
European countries have failed to take timely measures against Foreign Terrorist Fighters, which the UN defines as “individuals who travel to a nation other than their state for the purpose of participation in, terrorist acts or the providing or receiving of terrorist training, including in connection with armed conflict”.
Anadolu / ABC Flash Point WW III News 2019.
