Quora Answer: How Should Governments Deal with ISIS Brides?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “How do you think that governments should deal with ISIS brides and terrorists that want to return to their home countries?  Do you think that is right to strip them from their citizenship?”

Governments are prevented, by international law, from stripping citizens of their citizenship unless they already have another citizenship.  If this were allowed, we would have a lot more stateless people, and they would become a humanitarian crisis, and a larger international problem.  However, I am not a sympathetic man.  They should be tried for sedition and war crimes, not treated as innocents, and they should serve the severest penalties, up to, and including death.  Those who actively participated in the conflict should be executed.  Even if they are legally below age, they should be tried as adults.  For those found to be truly victims, and there were those brought there against their will, they need to undergo a deradicalisation programme, and eased back into society.