A Conservative Party member of the House of Lords has called for hate preachers and jihadi brides to be tried for treason, decrying the “inadequate sentence” of recently-released Islamic State supporter Anjem Choudary.
Former Justice Minister Lord Faulks QC called for an amendment to the Counter Terrorism and Security Bill in the Upper House of Parliament on Wednesday, adding an offence of treason to adequately punish those “waging war against your own country.”
“Those who live and benefit from life in the United Kingdom yet involve themselves in attacks against the United Kingdom either here or abroad are surely guilty of treason,” the Peer said.
“Are we too timid to call it that? Is it because allegiance to our country is considered unfashionable? If so, that seems to me to verge on the decadent, or at the very least it shows a country lacking in self-confidence.
“Those who reject the values of this country have the option of relinquishing their citizenship. But while they remain here or regard it as their home, surely they owe a duty to other citizens, who have their own human rights. This new definition of treason is a way of underlining that duty.”
Lord Faulks singled out the case of Anjem Choudary, the Islamist hate preacher who was convicted of encouraging support of Islamic State, criticising his short prison sentence and the “considerable amount of our resources will be spent on monitoring his activities” since he was released from prison on October 19th, less than halfway through his five-and-a-half-year sentence.
“What he did was undoubtedly a betrayal of his country. He acted as a recruiting agent for a group that intended to cause and has caused attacks on the United Kingdom, and which the UK faces abroad. He would be guilty of treason” under his proposal, the Peer pointed out.
Telling the chamber that some 900 British terror suspects went to Syria and Iraq during the conflicts, “described by our senior counterterrorism officer as a ‘big national security threat,’” he said they should face “immediate arrest and questioning,” saying that “brides of Jihad — who will or may claim duress or in other ways try and distance themselves from what others may have done,” are likewise traitors.
Up to 150 British jihadi brides are thought to have joined their husbands in the Middle East and Breitbart London reported this week that some 80 of them and their children are set to return to the UK from Kurdish-held parts of Syria.
Authorities have come under criticism for its failure to punish returning foreign fighters with the government admitting earlier in the year that “a significant portion” of the more than 400 returning Islamic State fighters are at large — while terror charges have been brought against British ex-servicemen who volunteered to fight with Western coalition-backed Kurdish forces against Islamists.