UK: Going Easy on ISIS Terrorists, Hard on Those Who Fought Them?
by Judith Bergman, Gatestone Institute:
The West has mercilessly let down persecuted minorities in the Middle East, while showing great concern for the well-being of returning ISIS terrorists, their children and their spouses. There seems to have been no such concern for the victims of ISIS terrorists, particularly the Christians and Yazidis.
[…] In the UK, it is estimated that just a few dozen British volunteers fought against ISIS. By comparison, approximately 850 UK nationals travelled from the UK to join ISIS.
Jim Matthews was the first person prosecuted for fighting with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). The YPG is not a proscribed terrorist group in the UK; its forces were backed by the British military and international airstrikes to drive ISIS out of its Syrian territories. Nevertheless, Matthews was charged with “attending a place used for terrorist training” for attending the training camp used for all YPG recruits. He told the Independent, “We [British YPG volunteers] went out there because our government was not doing enough. It was a job that needed doing, we had to get Isis out of that territory.” He was also evidently “jolted” to join the fight against Isis after seeing a photograph of a jihadi holding a woman’s severed head on Facebook. “It seemed like one of the most evil single images I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said.
When he came back to the UK, he was arrested and accused of terrorism. In February 2019, the charges against him were dropped, seemingly for lack of evidence.
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