Quora Answer: If a Citizen Goes to Fight for or Support ISIS in the Middle East, Should They be Allowed to Return?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “If a citizen goes to fight for or support ISIS, in the Middle East, for a few years, then wants to return, should they be allowed to?”

These people should absolutely be allowed to return, or brought back against their will.  This is not about misplaced compassion, but pragmatism.  While the emotive call would be to strip them of citizenship, that does not help the cause of the state.  Now, we have trained radicals beyond our jurisdiction, free to plot against the interests of the state, because we stripped them of citizenship.

Radicals and their enablers in custody can be assessed, and tried through the legal system.  They are also a great source of intelligence about the infiltration of sympathisers in our communities, their recruitment methods, and how these people managed to join ISIS.  Those who have engaged in any crime, from sedition to genocide, should be prosecuted, to be detained, or executed.  Those who were sympathisers should be detained in a deradicalisation programme until they are assessed to no longer have such sympathies.

In any case, a citizen may not, according to international law, be rendered stateless. A person can only be stripped of citizenship when they already have another.