Girl who ran away to Syria and IS wants to return to UK

[realibrad]

I think back to "Typhoid" Mary Mallon..... (understanding that such is completely indefensible today)

But yes, you are all right about what I am suggesting, morally and legally. All I'm getting at is that "she's worth more to us alive."

I agree with her value 100%. The problem, and its a good problem, is that you may never really be able to extract that value. I would be that she would be a wealth of information in terms of how people get radicalized and what we might do to prevent it.

As for the Typhoid marry, there were some things that made it different. They did try and let her go with stipulations that she could not do some jobs due to her risk. She was caught infecting people because she went back to cooking again. So a little different, but, not so different that your point is missed.

 

[zinfamous]

I agree with her value 100%. The problem, and its a good problem, is that you may never really be able to extract that value. I would be that she would be a wealth of information in terms of how people get radicalized and what we might do to prevent it.

As for the Typhoid marry, there were some things that made it different. They did try and let her go with stipulations that she could not do some jobs due to her risk. She was caught infecting people because she went back to cooking again. So a little different, but, not so different that your point is missed.

Well, the overall point about Marry Mallon here is that she provided inherent value--the first known immune carrier of Typhoid--so the issue that she was a health risk was as much of a reason to keep her quarantined as was her value as a, well "biofarm" to learn more about Typhoid.

 

[JSt0rm]

The ability to have no reaction to grotesque, violent acts is something that most of us don't have.

until its been normalized.

 

[mikeymikec]

So an indefinite detainment under... What legal grounds exactly?

Considering some pretty draconian counter-terrorism laws have been passed since 2001, I suspect something could be whipped up should they feel so inclined.

Then there's one of the most famous examples of course being gitmo.

I'm not suggesting that she's a particularly useful target for these kinds of tactics, but I think people would have to be pretty spectacularly naive to believe that most governments don't have a means - legal, grey-area-legal, or downright illegal but keep it secret, ways of dealing with undesirables.

If they were so inclined, she couldn't go missing right away of course, perhaps a jail term then a shady method of imprisoning her permanently under the guise of a new identity.

 

[pmv]

Considering some pretty draconian counter-terrorism laws have been passed since 2001, I suspect something could be whipped up should they feel so inclined.

Then there's one of the most famous examples of course being gitmo.

I'm not suggesting that she's a particularly useful target for these kinds of tactics, but I think people would have to be pretty spectacularly naive to believe that most governments don't have a means - legal, grey-area-legal, or downright illegal but keep it secret, ways of dealing with undesirables.

If they were so inclined, she couldn't go missing right away of course, perhaps a jail term then a shady method of imprisoning her permanently under the guise of a new identity.

There's the little matter of the ECHR and the Human Rights Act. Even leaving the EU doesn't remove those obligations.

I would have thought a bigger risk would be vigilante actions by (probably right-wing) individuals rather than any secret 'black ops' state stuff. The British state really isn't that competent, even if it were that ruthless. Look how long it took them to deport Abu Hamza.

 

[pmv]

I agree with her value 100%. The problem, and its a good problem, is that you may never really be able to extract that value. I would be that she would be a wealth of information in terms of how people get radicalized and what we might do to prevent it.

I'm unconvinced by all the talk of 'radicalisation', as if it's some magical process, where normal people get zapped with a radicalization-ray or something. Unless you are abducted, Patty Hearst style, and kept prisoner for a long time, you can't be 'brain washed'. She had to have been primed to fall for this stuff by her upbringing.

And I don't think she's anything very special. There are lots of people who turn out bad or embrace crazy ideologies, or join criminal or extremist groups, usually because of how they were raised. That she went abroad in the course of it doesn't make her anything unusual. She's just another dodgy UK citizen. Either the authorities can prove she did something criminal, and prosecute and jail her for it, or they'll just have to put her on the security services' "watch list" along with all the other dodgy people we already have. I don't see what else can legally be done.

 

[realibrad]

I'm unconvinced by all the talk of 'radicalisation', as if it's some magical process, where normal people get zapped with a radicalization-ray or something. Unless you are abducted, Patty Hearst style, and kept prisoner for a long time, you can't be 'brain washed'. She had to have been primed to fall for this stuff by her upbringing.

And I don't think she's anything very special. There are lots of people who turn out bad or embrace crazy ideologies, or join criminal or extremist groups, usually because of how they were raised. That she went abroad in the course of it doesn't make her anything unusual. She's just another dodgy UK citizen. Either the authorities can prove she did something criminal, and prosecute and jail her for it, or they'll just have to put her on the security services' "watch list" along with all the other dodgy people we already have. I don't see what else can legally be done.

She might have been crazy, but, now sane enough to want to leave. Still likely some information to get there.

 

[yllus]

I'm unconvinced by all the talk of 'radicalisation', as if it's some magical process, where normal people get zapped with a radicalization-ray or something. Unless you are abducted, Patty Hearst style, and kept prisoner for a long time, you can't be 'brain washed'. She had to have been primed to fall for this stuff by her upbringing.

And I don't think she's anything very special. There are lots of people who turn out bad or embrace crazy ideologies, or join criminal or extremist groups, usually because of how they were raised. That she went abroad in the course of it doesn't make her anything unusual. She's just another dodgy UK citizen. Either the authorities can prove she did something criminal, and prosecute and jail her for it, or they'll just have to put her on the security services' "watch list" along with all the other dodgy people we already have. I don't see what else can legally be done.

Not necessarily. I've witnessed radicalization first-hand of normal people who grew up in non-religious or in-name-only religious families and cultures. The common denominator in my eyes is they always tend to kind of be losers - not your bottom-of-the-barrel losers who literally have no bed to sleep in at night, but dudes and gals who think they're smarter than they actually are, and end up living with their parents in the basement into their 30s and having a fairly low-level job. I think radicalization can happen really fast when these losers latch on to a cause because then they're not a loser, they're a fighter.

This lady was probably a normalish loser back at home; she wanted to be more. I wish she could be left there to rot but the right thing to do is probably bring her back to the UK as the UK should try to do for all of its citizens.

 

[WelshBloke]

Look how long it took them to deport Abu Hamza.

Abu Hamza was a clown. The state wasn't worried about him for good reasons, it was the Daily Fail that had a crisis about him.

 

[WelshBloke]

Not necessarily. I've witnessed radicalization first-hand of normal people who grew up in non-religious or in-name-only religious families and cultures. The common denominator in my eyes is they always tend to kind of be losers - not your bottom-of-the-barrel losers who literally have no bed to sleep in at night, but dudes and gals who think they're smarter than they actually are, and end up living with their parents in the basement into their 30s and having a fairly low-level job. I think radicalization can happen really fast when these losers latch on to a cause because then they're not a loser, they're a fighter.

This lady was probably a normalish loser back at home; she wanted to be more. I wish she could be left there to rot but the right thing to do is probably bring her back to the UK as the UK should try to do for all of its citizens.

The same thing is happening right across the political and religious spectrum. It's really prevalent amongst insular (primarily male) internet communities.

 

[zinfamous]

I'm unconvinced by all the talk of 'radicalisation', as if it's some magical process, where normal people get zapped with a radicalization-ray or something. Unless you are abducted, Patty Hearst style, and kept prisoner for a long time, you can't be 'brain washed'. She had to have been primed to fall for this stuff by her upbringing.

And I don't think she's anything very special. There are lots of people who turn out bad or embrace crazy ideologies, or join criminal or extremist groups, usually because of how they were raised. That she went abroad in the course of it doesn't make her anything unusual. She's just another dodgy UK citizen. Either the authorities can prove she did something criminal, and prosecute and jail her for it, or they'll just have to put her on the security services' "watch list" along with all the other dodgy people we already have. I don't see what else can legally be done.

Are you the only one that didn't witness the radicalization of an entire political party, including supposed moral evangelicals to jump on the Trump train over a very short period of 3 or 4 years? Yes, these people had been long-primed for that kind of indoctrination, but as we know, it doesn't take much to push such people into willingly reversing all manner of decency if you trigger the couple of key points (single, specific issues) that they have been primed for.

 

[yllus]

The same thing is happening right across the political and religious spectrum. It's really prevalent amongst insular (primarily male) internet communities.

Absolutely. I've actually seen it happen to a white woman I know who's a Starbucks barista - she posts pro-Nazi memes on Instagram these days, and I mean that literally. But I've also seen the change in a brown dude who lived with his parents, who is almost certainly a virgin. They're both normal looking and sounding but you wouldn't want to talk to them for more than five minutes at a party, if you know what I mean?

 

[pmv]

Are you the only one that didn't witness the radicalization of an entire political party, including supposed moral evangelicals to jump on the Trump train over a very short period of 3 or 4 years? Yes, these people had been long-primed for that kind of indoctrination, but as we know, it doesn't take much to push such people into willingly reversing all manner of decency if you trigger the couple of key points (single, specific issues) that they have been primed for.

I don't think that's quite the same thing. For one thing, the Republican Party has always appeared very right-wing to me, plus you are talking about an entire social movement, not a small number of extremists.

I just don't think there's some magical brain-washing force that creates far-right white people like the Charlottesville mob - they are a product of their upbringing and their social circumstances, and, ultimately, they are a product of the entire history of the US. They are not the result of some evil guru magically converting them over the internet. The talk of 'radicalisation' among Muslims similarly seems to render the whole problem apolitical and non-sociological, as if it's some supernatural process, involving villains with superpowers of mind-moulding.

Something makes those individuals susceptible to bad ideas, and, to a very large degree, they willingly embrace those ideas.

 

[pmv]

Not necessarily. I've witnessed radicalization first-hand of normal people who grew up in non-religious or in-name-only religious families and cultures. The common denominator in my eyes is they always tend to kind of be losers - not your bottom-of-the-barrel losers who literally have no bed to sleep in at night, but dudes and gals who think they're smarter than they actually are, and end up living with their parents in the basement into their 30s and having a fairly low-level job. I think radicalization can happen really fast when these losers latch on to a cause because then they're not a loser, they're a fighter.

This lady was probably a normalish loser back at home; she wanted to be more.

You make a reasonable argument. I'm unconvinced it applies to this particular case, and certainly not to _every_ case, but I concede you do seem to describe _part_ of the story for some. There are different constituencies extremist groups appeal to, I don't think the logic is the same for all of them.

I have in mind people I know who joined extremist groups in their youth, whose parents disowned them, but decades later pointed out that it was those same parents who primed them for that in the first place. My suspicion is that applies in many of these ISIS-recruit cases (as I bet it does for many neo-nazi types).

I don't think there's any case for somehow removing her citizenship, incidentally. As I say, she's no different from any number of British citizens who have adopted horrible ideas or even committed crimes. We don't strip citizenship from any of them, we didn't from the Jamie Bulger killers or the Moors Murderers, I don't see any sense in ignoring proper legal process. Just follow the law.

 

[yllus]

You make a reasonable argument. I'm unconvinced it applies to this particular case, and certainly not to _every_ case, but I concede you do seem to describe _part_ of the story for some. There are different constituencies extremist groups appeal to, I don't think the logic is the same for all of them.

I have in mind people I know who joined extremist groups in their youth, whose parents disowned them, but decades later pointed out that it was those same parents who primed them for that in the first place. My suspicion is that applies in many of these ISIS-recruit cases (as I bet it does for many neo-nazi types).

I don't think there's any case for somehow removing her citizenship, incidentally. As I say, she's no different from any number of British citizens who have adopted horrible ideas or even committed crimes. We don't strip citizenship from any of them, we didn't from the Jamie Bulger killers or the Moors Murderers, I don't see any sense in ignoring proper legal process. Just follow the law.

Yeah, my experiences are extremely anecdotal. There probably are a ton of cases in which shit-talking parents who grouse about the West radicalize their kids.

I don't think stripping her of citizenship should ever an option. Bring her home; we can't pick and choose what rights and privileges we provide to citizens.

 

[mikeymikec]

There's the little matter of the ECHR and the Human Rights Act. Even leaving the EU doesn't remove those obligations.

I would have thought a bigger risk would be vigilante actions by (probably right-wing) individuals rather than any secret 'black ops' state stuff.

I agree, I was just questioning a point that interchange had made.

The British state really isn't that competent, even if it were that ruthless. Look how long it took them to deport Abu Hamza.

I wouldn't question the British government's ruthlessness when it comes to those they consider to be foreigners personally (re: immigrants, windrush, etc), but also I heard that the figure for the number of people who have died after either waiting for their disability benefit assessment or died after being denied disability benefit is in the thousands, not to mention that guy with COPD and ended up in hospital with pneumonia after being denied disability benefit.

 

[mikeymikec]

I'm unconvinced by all the talk of 'radicalisation', as if it's some magical process, where normal people get zapped with a radicalization-ray or something. Unless you are abducted, Patty Hearst style, and kept prisoner for a long time, you can't be 'brain washed'. She had to have been primed to fall for this stuff by her upbringing.

And I don't think she's anything very special. There are lots of people who turn out bad or embrace crazy ideologies, or join criminal or extremist groups, usually because of how they were raised. That she went abroad in the course of it doesn't make her anything unusual. She's just another dodgy UK citizen. Either the authorities can prove she did something criminal, and prosecute and jail her for it, or they'll just have to put her on the security services' "watch list" along with all the other dodgy people we already have. I don't see what else can legally be done.

I would have thought that if she was radicalised by someone close to her (e.g. parents), I think the government will have already investigated that and it would already have come to light.

 

[mikeymikec]

Abu Hamza was a clown. The state wasn't worried about him for good reasons, it was the Daily Fail that had a crisis about him.

Donald Trump is a clown. How much of a danger a person represents depends largely on the circumstances (and in Hamza's case, how many people they've indoctrinated, to what degree and what their circumstances are).

 

[pmv]

Abu Hamza was a clown. The state wasn't worried about him for good reasons, it was the Daily Fail that had a crisis about him.

I'm not confident there's a clear dividing line between 'clowns' and genuinely dangerous figures. Anjem Choudrey often strikes me as a ridiculous blowhard, but he apparently has fairly close connections to a lot of people who went on to go to Syria or commit violent acts.

Mainly the point is, though, that the UK state clearly _wanted_ to kick Hamza out, they just proved to be woefully inept at the process (and who was the inept Home Secretary at the time...?)

I don't find the 'James Bond' licence-to-kill image of the, British er, 'deep state', that plausible. I'm quite sure they can be extremely _callous_, I just don't see them as, outside of the military, ruthlessly efficient assassin types. Only in extreme situations do they act like that, and only very particular parts of the state have the competence to do it. And those sections of the state only get deployed in very particular contexts, usually colonial ones (as with 'shoot to kill' and collusion in Northern Ireland).

I'm thinking, although the British state (I find I really want to say 'ruling class') can be murderously ruthless, I reckon, as possibly the oldest and most sophisticated of its kind in the world, they are deeply invested in wanting to feel they live in a peaceful, cultured and 'normal' country. So they are hugely reluctant to turn that ruthlessness on their domestic population. Its always been reserved for the Empire.

 

[pmv]

I would have thought that if she was radicalised by someone close to her (e.g. parents), I think the government will have already investigated that and it would already have come to light.

But that depends what one means by 'radicalised'. I suspect with a lot of these junior-Jihadis, they were _primed_ partly by their parents, who at the very least failed to bring them up in a way where they'd resist extremist influences, by giving them anything more positive to believe in, and who probably filled their heads unthinkingly with dodgy beliefs, never imagining they'd actually act on them. That's just my suspicion. Others might have just been petty-criminal 'lost soul' types (especially if they were converts).

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

The first question is that after taking up arms for an enemy, the basis for treason at least in the US, does she have the fundamental right of return to the Uk?

 

[pmv]

The first question is that after taking up arms for an enemy, the basis for treason at least in the US, does she have the fundamental right of return to the Uk?

I suspect it depends on the legal definition of an 'enemy' and the fact that ISIS is/was not a recognised state. There is an offense of joining an illegal organization, though, but it's not 'treason'.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I suspect it depends on the legal definition of an 'enemy' and the fact that ISIS is/was not a recognised state. There is an offense of joining an illegal organization, though, but it's not 'treason'.

There are no doubt good reasons for defense and prosecution on the matter and I recognize my lack of expertise in the field.

With that said let's go with your sense of things. When there is an organization legally defined as a committed violent enemy of a nation, does a member leaving that country to act against it have a legal right of return to the UK?

If so then anyone can become an enemy by their participation in an enemy organization and reenter at will. That seems strange.

 

[pmv]

There are no doubt good reasons for defense and prosecution on the matter and I recognize my lack of expertise in the field.

That said when there is an organization legally defined as a committed violent enemy of a nation, does a member leaving that country to act against it have a legal right of return to the UK?

If so then anyone can become an enemy by their participation in an enemy organization and reenter at will. That seems strange.

I dunno, I'm not a lawyer. I can only repost the link I posted before:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...-to-join-fight-against-islamic-state-in-syria

That was for just planning/trying to join the PKK (and fight _against_ ISIS). But the PKK is an enemy of our wonderfully democratic, human-rights-respecting NATO ally, Turkey, so maybe different standards get applied? And that explains why others have apparently gone to join ISIS and come back without being jailed.

I just don't know there's a radical difference between joining some criminal organisation abroad and joining one at home. We don't strip citizenship rights for the latter. My gut feeling is they should be treated the same either way, and it shouldn't matterwhether the perp doing it is a child of an immigrant or non-white or Muslim or whatever. Join a gang of criminal lunatics and pay a legal price, but it shouldn't involve loss of citizenship.

Edit - she could, presumably, by tried and sentenced by the legal authorities where she is...but I'm not sure who they would be at this point. Assad? The Kurds? Who has legal juristriction?