Get rid of 'em the easy way
26/2/18 14:09![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mahnmut posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
talkpoliticsThis is about escape from responsibility. I'm talking of a scandal that almost no one cares about: a number of Western governments don't want to take responsibility for their citizens who've joined ISIS and who've now been detained. The Syrian Kurds for example are having huge difficulties keeping the large number of captured ISIS fighters, so they're hoping the West would take their own citizens back at some point, and prosecute them there. And because the situation on the ground is pretty dire and unstable, there's a risk that the detained jihadists could be set free and join the fight again.
The ministers of defense of the anti-terrorist coalition met earlier this month in Rome to discuss this problem. James Mattis, the US secretary of defense (being the Kurds' biggest ally) tried to convince his European partners of the necessity of such a step. But he was unsuccessful: neither the British nor the French showed any readiness to take their citizens back. Germany's position still remains unclear.
Out of the 5K Europeans who joined ISIS, 1.5K are now back to their countries. Exactly how many of the remaining are still among the living and how many are captured is unknown. Estimates point to hundreds of European citizens among the 20K+ captured ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria.
To prevent the return of these jihadists, Britain is using an old trick: strip them of their British citizenship whenever the law allows. This way the UK has gotten rid of about 150 of its jihadists, the NYT reports. The French don't have this opportunity because of the specifics of their legislation. Le Monde reports that about 100 French citizens who fought for ISIS are in Kurdish captivity, 60 of them under-age. The French foreign minister said that those who committed atrocities should be prosecuted in the place where they were captured. France would only intervene in cases where the prosecution process is violating the principles of fair trial, whatever that's supposed to mean.
Except, there's some discrepancy between this position and Macron's words, who said every case would be viewed separately The position of the French foreign minister is particularly weird, given the situation in the region. The Syrian Kurds have no operating justice system that could match any international and European standards. There are constant reports of torturing, lynching, etc. By "fair trial", the French must mean only sparing French citizens the death penalty, then. Because such an outcome would be a problem for France as a country that officially advocates for the abolition of the death penalty.
The situation of the detainees in Iraq is even worse, by the way: NGOs like Human Rights Watch report of systematic tortures, rapes, murders of supposed ISIS members and sympathizers, committed by the Iraqi military and police. The Kurdish forces are being accused of arbitrary executions of hundreds of detainees. HRW reports that the Iraqi judicial system operates "poorly" in all possible aspects, from the idenfitication of suspects, to living conditions in the prisons, to the trials themselves.
A lot of outrcry was caused last month by the death sentence of a German woman who had joined ISIS. The death sentence was taken as per the Iraqi anti-terrorist law. In this case the German intervention only boiled down to substituting the death sentence with life prison.
Europe and the US would probably be happy if all those fighters had just died there. Last year James Mattis said the US objective was that no ISIS fighters survived. The French and British politicians said similar things about their respective citizens. The French media are reporting of spec ops by the French special forces whose objective is to eliminate French jihadists so they couldn't cause trouble back home.
If we put aside fear of an escalation of the terror threat in Europe with the return of these jihadists, we'd realize that the real problem is elsewhere: there are concerns that in many cases there's just not enough hard evidence to prosecute these people in Europe. That's why some are trying to bypass the "innocent until proven guilty" principle that's supposed to be valid in all cases, including supposed terrorists. And this undermines the supremacy of law and negates all the values that the West purports to be defending exactly from extremists and radicals.
The ministers of defense of the anti-terrorist coalition met earlier this month in Rome to discuss this problem. James Mattis, the US secretary of defense (being the Kurds' biggest ally) tried to convince his European partners of the necessity of such a step. But he was unsuccessful: neither the British nor the French showed any readiness to take their citizens back. Germany's position still remains unclear.
Out of the 5K Europeans who joined ISIS, 1.5K are now back to their countries. Exactly how many of the remaining are still among the living and how many are captured is unknown. Estimates point to hundreds of European citizens among the 20K+ captured ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria.
To prevent the return of these jihadists, Britain is using an old trick: strip them of their British citizenship whenever the law allows. This way the UK has gotten rid of about 150 of its jihadists, the NYT reports. The French don't have this opportunity because of the specifics of their legislation. Le Monde reports that about 100 French citizens who fought for ISIS are in Kurdish captivity, 60 of them under-age. The French foreign minister said that those who committed atrocities should be prosecuted in the place where they were captured. France would only intervene in cases where the prosecution process is violating the principles of fair trial, whatever that's supposed to mean.
Except, there's some discrepancy between this position and Macron's words, who said every case would be viewed separately The position of the French foreign minister is particularly weird, given the situation in the region. The Syrian Kurds have no operating justice system that could match any international and European standards. There are constant reports of torturing, lynching, etc. By "fair trial", the French must mean only sparing French citizens the death penalty, then. Because such an outcome would be a problem for France as a country that officially advocates for the abolition of the death penalty.
The situation of the detainees in Iraq is even worse, by the way: NGOs like Human Rights Watch report of systematic tortures, rapes, murders of supposed ISIS members and sympathizers, committed by the Iraqi military and police. The Kurdish forces are being accused of arbitrary executions of hundreds of detainees. HRW reports that the Iraqi judicial system operates "poorly" in all possible aspects, from the idenfitication of suspects, to living conditions in the prisons, to the trials themselves.
A lot of outrcry was caused last month by the death sentence of a German woman who had joined ISIS. The death sentence was taken as per the Iraqi anti-terrorist law. In this case the German intervention only boiled down to substituting the death sentence with life prison.
Europe and the US would probably be happy if all those fighters had just died there. Last year James Mattis said the US objective was that no ISIS fighters survived. The French and British politicians said similar things about their respective citizens. The French media are reporting of spec ops by the French special forces whose objective is to eliminate French jihadists so they couldn't cause trouble back home.
If we put aside fear of an escalation of the terror threat in Europe with the return of these jihadists, we'd realize that the real problem is elsewhere: there are concerns that in many cases there's just not enough hard evidence to prosecute these people in Europe. That's why some are trying to bypass the "innocent until proven guilty" principle that's supposed to be valid in all cases, including supposed terrorists. And this undermines the supremacy of law and negates all the values that the West purports to be defending exactly from extremists and radicals.
