The only way to deal with British ISIS terrorists in almost every case is to kill them, a British international development minister has said.
Stewart, a former diplomat, said there were “difficult moral issues” involved.
“They are absolutely dedicated, as members of the Islamic state, toward the creation of a caliphate. They believe in an extremely hateful doctrine, which involves killing themselves, killing others, and trying to use violence and brutality to create an eighth-century or seventh-century state.
“So I’m afraid we have to be serious about the fact these people are a serious danger to us, and unfortunately the only way of dealing with them will be, in almost every case, to kill them,” he said.
He added, “These are people who are executing people in the back of their heads, who have held women and children hostage, who are torturing and murdering, trying by violence to impose their will. Our response has to be, when somebody does that, I’m afraid, to deal with that.”
In a tweet posted on Monday, Oct. 23, Stewart clarified his point, emphasizing that people should be treated within the law, and that ISIS is a death cult.
Stewart said that people should not be going to volunteer in Syria.
“If you wish to serve your country and you wish to fight terrorism, then please apply to join the military or join the police or join our intelligence services, we’ll train you, we’ll work with you to do it in a legal and controlled fashion,” he said.
But Max Hill QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism in the UK, has a different view.
He recently told the BBC that young people who “naively” join ISIS and go to fight in Syria should be allowed to come back to the UK. He said that it was not worth losing a generation of young people and they should be allowed to rejoin society.
“That threat is multidimensional, evolving rapidly, and operating at a scale and pace we’ve not seen before,” he said.
