300 UK jihadists said to return from Syria

Around half the estimated 700 Britons who have gone to fight with Islamic State jihadists in Syria have returned home, The Sunday Telegraph newspaper reports.

The weekly broadsheet’s figures, in a story about a leaked draft of the Home Office interior ministry’s new counter-extremism strategy, goes further than previous estimates, of around 500 individuals leaving and 250 returning.

Around 320 “dangerous” jihadists have come back to Britain, the newspaper says.

The new counter-extremism plan involves targeting Muslim Sharia courts, a ban on radicals working unsupervised with children, and a requirement that job centers identify welfare claimants who may become radicalization targets, the report said.

There would also be welfare penalties to encourage people to learn English, in order to improve integration, and tighter rules on granting citizenship to ensure newcomers embrace “British values,” the broadsheet says.

The Home Office declines to comment on the report when contacted by AFP.

The Sunday Telegraph says it understood that the draft will be published before parliament is dissolved at the end of the month before the May 7 general election.

— AFP