Over the weekend, President Donald Trump called on European countries to take back captured Islamic State fighters in order for them to be prosecuted by their home countries. On Saturday, Trump tweeted: “The United States is asking Britain, France, Germany and other European allies to take back over 800 ISIS fighters that we captured in Syria and put them on trial.”
Trump’s rational for this demand is pretty straightforward. The U.S. does not want to watch as these ISIS fighters, that it made the effort to capture, permeate the European continent. If left on the battlefields of Syria after a coalition withdrawal, there is nothing preventing these Islamic State POWs from going back to their countries of origin.
Some of America’s European allies are being cooperative in this regard. International media reported recently that France is accelerating plans to end its military commitment in Syria and is considering airlifting captured foreign ISIS fighters out of the country. France’s fear is that a precipitous withdrawal of Western forces from the country will leave liberated areas unstable and make it impossible to contain the prisoners.
Others are less excited to fall in line with Trump’s demands. British officials have taken the stance that fighters held by the West and their Syrian Kurd allies can only return if they seek consular help in Turkey. The UK government says it faces a dilemma, especially concerning the wives or children of British fighters. And that’s in addition to the major bureaucratic challenge of prosecuting the fighters or otherwise keeping them from undertaking terrorist acts in the country.
As the West’s Syrian project seems to be coming to a close, the next challenge emerging will be that of domestic law enforcement agencies. Police departments from around the world have been working to share information about captured fighters and terror suspects, often through the France-based Interpol. Interpol’s chief Jürgen Stock recently warned of the threat of ISIS militants returning to Europe. “A lot of these are suspected terrorists or those who are linked to terrorist groups as supporters who are facing maybe two to five years in jail. Because they were not convicted of a concrete terrorist attack but only support for terrorist activities, their sentences are perhaps not so heavy,” said Stock in December interview.
