UK: We Can’t Monitor All Syria Fighters

Local Editor

British security forces will find it impossible to monitor all the estimated 500 extremists fighting in Syria and Iraq after they return home, a former top intelligence official said Monday.

Richard Barrett, ex-head of counter-terrorism at the MI6 overseas security agency, told the BBC that authorities would have to try to identify the biggest threats.

Barrett said the number who had gone to Syria "could be as high as 500 by now".
His comments came after several young British men featured in a YouTube recruitment video for the terrorist so-called "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" [ISIL].

"The trouble is, you don't know which ones are coming back just wanting to get on with their lives and which ones are coming back quite severely radicalized," he said.

He added it would be an "enormous challenge" and added that there was "absolutely no way" the security services could follow all of them, "that's out of the question."

"Clearly they'll have to prioritize and they'll have to choose those that they think are likely to pose the greatest risk," he added.
"Beyond that I think they'll have to rely very much on members of the community and other people expressing their concern and worry about the behavior of perhaps their returned friend or family member."

The father of two young British terrorist fighters -Nasser Muthana, 20, who appeared in the ISIL video, and Aseel Muthanam 17 - said they had "betrayed" Britain.
"This is my country. I came here aged 13 from Aden when I was orphaned," father Ahmed Muthana told the Guardian newspaper.

The Daily Mail newspaper said a mosque in their home town of Cardiff, Wales, where the brothers worshiped had played host in 2012 to Saudi cleric Mohammed al-Arifi, who has called for the so-called "holy war" in Syria.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team