WORLD_ SYRIA_ British citizens said to have joined fight in Syria

British citizens said to have joined fight in Syria

Article by: ALAN COWELL , New York Times
Updated: November 21, 2013 - 9:09 PM
startribune.com

Reports — following evidence that Americans also have joined war — raised concerns of radicalization of Muslims.


LONDON – As evidence mounts that dozens of Americans have traveled or sought to travel to Syria to join rebel forces, the British Foreign Office said Thursday that it was investigating reports that several Britons had died there while fighting on the side of Islamic militants opposed to President Bashar Assad.

The reports emerged in the Times of London and on the BBC’s flagship “Newsnight” current affairs program. They deepened concerns that Britons who have fought in Syria could return to their own country to radicalize other Muslims. British security officials have said 200 to 300 Britons are fighting with jihadist forces in Syria.

Asked to comment on the reports of casualties among them, a British official, speaking in return for anonymity under departmental rules, said authorities here had urged citizens to avoid all travel to Syria because of the “extreme risk” and believed that “moderate Syrians have been explicit that they want aid, not foreign fighters.”

The official said a report in the Times of London on Thursday that four Britons had been killed was being investigated.

The British reports came a day after U.S. intelligence officials said that since 2011 Americans seeking to join the jihadist cause in Syria represented a small proportion of an estimated 600 radicalized young Muslims with Western passports who were entering Syria from Europe, North America and Australia. The Western passport-holders form only a fraction of the overall tally of foreign fighters, estimated at 6,000 to 11,000.

A man who identified himself as one of the Britons fighting with the rebels, Ifthekar Jaman, 23, from Hampshire in southern England, told the BBC late Wednesday that he had no intention to return to Britain and did not represent a threat. Jaman said he was part of the radical Al-Qaida-linked Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a dominant force among rebel movements in northern Syria.

“This is the group I am with. We are trying to establish the law of God, the law of Allah,” he said, interviewed over the Internet. “This is the duty on me. All these people are suffering. Muslims are being slaughtered.”



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