Should The ISIS Teenager Escape Treason’s Tree?

Opinion

The ISIS Teenager

British Forces in action Crown photo credit

Debate has raged over whether a 19 year old girl should be allowed to return to the UK after living with ISIS.

Social media tweeting by British Asians is mixed over the vexed question of ISIS supporters’ right of return.

Some argue no, and perhaps don’t want to be seen associating themselves with a branch of Islam which has nothing to do with their own beliefs.

The Establishment view seems to be she is somehow a threat after becoming politically radicalised after reaching Syria.

Although perhaps she was already so before she even left home?

We should remember that Britons have fought as mercenaries in many past conflicts.

In the 1930s volunteer battalions were recruited to fight on both sides during the Spanish civil war.

During WWI the Royal Family had to ditch their German sounding surname and adopt the current one of Windsor.

The German Kaiser was a grandson of Queen Victoria and an Admiral in the British Royal Navy. Many of the upper classes had intermarried with cousins in each other’s countries.

But they were following a well-established principle that one could support one side or the other, but not both.

Indeed this was recorded back in Simon de Montfort’s times in 13^th century England.

The French king had grown tired of having his Norman nobles traveling between their lands in England and France, with their loyalties divided.

So he insisted they swap their estates around and in future stay one side of the Channel or the other. They had to decide whether they were English or French.

In more recent times, perhaps the case of William Joyce is of interest. In 1940 he crossed to wartime Germany and joined their propaganda ministry becoming known as the infamous ‘Lord Haw Haw’.

In 1945 he was arrested and charged with treason. He claimed he was born in Eire and therefore a neutral. Yet the Court held as he’d once applied for a British passport he was a British subject. He was subsequently hanged.

Today, surely there is nothing wrong in just visiting another country?

After all, Britain is not at war with Syria, and if the teenager currently in the spotlight, was simply experiencing a different way of life, should it be any different if she’d visited an Israeli kibbutz?

It’s what she in did in Syria that really counts.

If she was involved in any atrocity against ISIS prisoners, then she deserves to be extradited to Syria to answer for crimes committed in that country.

If however, she took part in firing on forces of the British Crown, why should she be spared treason’s tree?