Both Labour and Reform UK have warned that now Bashar al-Assad has been toppled rebels are freeing prisoners across the country.
The Telegraph has reported there are fears that British jihadist imprisoned in Syria could be freed and the Home Office Minister Angela Eagle has said British intelligence are “keeping a very, very close eye” on the events unfolding now Assad has fled.
Eagle told Times Radio, “Any potential return of jihadists is a matter of great concern, which is why we’ll be keeping a very, very close eye on how this situation develops in the coming days and weeks.”
Reform UK’s Rupert Lowe said: “Jihadists have been entering our country illegally from a number of countries, not just Syria.
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“We need to treat illegal migrants with the same intense suspicion, regardless of where they have supposedly come from.
“I don’t trust any of them, nor should the Home Office.”
On Monday Sky News reported that Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation in the UK has warned prisons in northeastern Syria “are holding some of the most dangerous Islamic State (IS) fighters.”
He warned “these people – were they ever to be released – they would no doubt form a kernel” of a new terror group.
James Heappey, the former armed forces minister warned if these detention camps “are not guarded properly – and there are all sorts of reasons why that might be the case – then you could see a situation within which the camps just sort of broke out and the guards were overrun and all of that concentration of IS firepower disperses around the region.
“The other thing that could happen is a new democratically elected Syrian government with a mandate to govern may turn round and say: why is Syria still the place in which all of these foreign fighters are being held?
“And they, the legitimate government in Damascus engaged with their Western allies, might turn around and say: ‘Enough. Time for you to take back your foreign fighters’.”
