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Daily Mirror
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mirror
Islamic State fighters who returned to UK must face justice, MPs and peers call
Fighters with the so-called Islamic State who returned to the UK after killings, terror attacks and persecution of minorities in Iraq and Syria must face justice, MPs and peers have said Hundreds of fighters with the so-called Islamic State who returned to the UK after killings, terror attacks and persecution of minorities in Iraq and Syria must face justice, MPs and peers have said. More than 400 people of national security concern who left the UK to take part in the Syrian conflict in the 2010s are believed to have returned. The UK Government has formally recognised that Daesh, also known as IS or ISIS, committed acts of genocide. But so far none of those who have returned to the UK have been successfully prosecuted for international crimes, the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) said. The committee has called for a change in the UK's approach to ensure that the perpetrators of genocide are brought to justice. IS, which once held large swathes of land in Syria and Iraq, was responsible for widespread campaigns of terror, murder and rape often targeted against minority religious groups like the Yazidis. Estimates suggest 5,000 Yazidis were killed and more than 200,000 displaced from their homes by the terrorist group. The committee called on the Government to take steps to ensure IS supporters can be tried in British courts, rather than in Iraq or Syria where the crimes took place. Under the International Criminal Court Act, UK courts can only prosecute crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes where they have been committed by British nationals or residents. The Joint Committee has called for a change to the law to abolish these restrictions to ensure anyone suspected to have committed genocide or war crimes can face justice in the UK. It has proposed amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill, currently being debated by Parliament. Ministers have previously said any such crimes are "best investigated and prosecuted under local laws", according to the committee. But the parliamentarians said this was unlikely to happen in the Middle Eastern countries where IS operated. "Where the UK has jurisdiction over international crimes, the UK should seek to investigate and prosecute such crimes," the committee's report said. Lord Alton of Liverpool, chairman of the JCHR, said: "This is not something the UK can simply wash its hands of because it happened overseas. We know that British nationals committed the most horrendous crimes in Iraq and Syria under the Daesh regime and we have a duty to see them brought to justice. To date, no Daesh fighters have been successfully prosecuted for international crimes in the UK and we find this unacceptable." He added: "We want to see more action from the Government in identifying the perpetrators, some of whom may have returned to Britain, others likely detained in camps in Syria. This will require better co-ordination from law enforcement and criminal justice, and also the removal of barriers preventing some prosecutions." The report also calls for greater transparency about how the Government uses its power to strip British people of their citizenship because of links with IS. Shamima Begum, who travelled to IS-held territory a decade ago, aged 15, is the most famous example of the state's use of this power. But the report said the UK "uses deprivation of citizenship orders more than almost any country in the world", and ministers must account for this. More must also be done to repatriate children held in camps in north-east Syria, the committee said, where conditions are "deplorable", according to Lord Alton. He added: "It is in the UK's interest to ensure they do not become a new generation of the radicalised and they must be brought home."
Arab News
07-04-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
Dossier accuses British serving in Israeli military of war crimes in Gaza
LONDON: A group of UK citizens who served with the Israeli military in Gaza will be the subject of a war crimes complaint handed to the Metropolitan Police, The Guardian reported on Monday. A 240-page dossier compiled by a group of lawyers based in The Hague documents the activities of 10 Brits in Gaza, with complaints against them including alleged targeting of civilians and aid workers, coordinated attacks on hospitals and protected sites, and the forced displacement of people. The dossier, which covers the period from October 2023 to May 2024 and took six months to compile, will be handed to the Met's war crimes unit. The complaint against the 10 Brits, who cannot be named for legal reasons, will be brought on behalf of the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and the UK-based Public Interest Law Centre. The dossier includes eyewitness testimony from civilians in Gaza. One passage features evidence from a witness who recalled an attack on a hospital, including seeing corpses 'scattered on the ground, especially in the middle of the hospital courtyard, where many dead bodies were buried in a mass grave.' The account added that a bulldozer being used to demolish part of the hospital 'ran over a dead body in a horrific and heart-wrenching scene desecrating the dead.' Raji Sourani, director of the PCHR, said: 'This is illegal, this is inhuman and enough is enough. The government cannot say we didn't know; we are providing them with all the evidence.' PILC legal director Paul Heron said: 'We're filing our report to make clear these war crimes are not in our name.' The 2001 International Criminal Court Act says it 'is an offence against the law of England and Wales for a person to commit genocide, a crime against humanity, or a war crime.' Michael Mansfield KC, the lawyer leading the group, said: 'If one of our nationals is committing an offence, we ought to be doing something about it. Even if we can't stop the government of foreign countries behaving badly, we can at least stop our nationals from behaving badly. 'British nationals are under a legal obligation not to collude with crimes committed in Palestine. No one is above the law.' Sean Summerfield, a barrister who also worked on the dossier, said: 'The public will be shocked, I would have thought, to hear that there's credible evidence that Brits have been directly involved in committing some of those atrocities.' More than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023.
