ISISFive Britons go to Iraq, Syria every week to join ISIS: U.K. police chief

The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the most senior U.K. police officer, has revealed that five Britons are travelling to Iraq and Syria to join Islamic State (ISIS) every week. Hogan-Howe spoke after it was reported that a third Jihadi from Portsmouth has been killed in the conflict.

Hogan-Howe said that the figure of five Britons a week joining ISIS was a minimum and the “drumbeat of terrorism in the U.K.” was now “faster and more intense.”

“Those are the ones that we believe have gone. There may be many more who set out to travel to another country and meandered over to Syria and Iraq in a way that is not always possible to spot when you have failed states and leaky borders,” Hogan-Howe said.

Hogan-Howe was speaking at a national security conference in London. He noted that militants’ activities were “not just the horrors of distant lands” and warned of the terrorist threat posed in the United Kingdom by returning fighters.

The Guardian reports that the individual killed in Syria was Mamunur Roshid, 24, who was known to be one of six men from Portsmouth who travelled to Syria in 2013. Muslim leaders in Portsmouth said his death follows the deaths of Ifthekar Jaman, 23, last December and Muhammad Hamidur Rahman, 25, in July.

Security analysts tracking the movements of foreign fighters in war-ravaged Syria said Roshid may have been killed in the continuing battle for Kobani, where ISIS is fighting Kurds and the U.S. air force for control of the town, the fourth largest Kurdish city in Syria.

Hogan-Howe said: “The advance of IS across Iraq and Syria, which happened incredibly quickly, indeed now towards Turkey, are not just the horrors of distant lands.

“We know that over 500 British nationals travelled to join the conflict. Many have returned and many will wish to do so in the coming months and perhaps in future years. The Met say they have made 218 arrests for terrorist-related activity this year, an increase of about 70 percent in three years.

“A large part of this increased arrest rate is due to terrorist activities, plots and planning linked to Syria. The trend is, I think, set to continue,” Hogan-Howe said.

He added that the return of “potentially militarized individuals” to the streets of the United Kingdom “is a risk to our communities.”

The chair of Portsmouth’s Jami mosque, Abdul Jalil, said: “We are very worried about this [young British Muslims going Syria to join ISIS]. The imam will speak about this at the mosque on Friday, telling people not to go to Syria,” he added.

“We are doing everything we can, we are speaking with the council, the crime prevention team. We are handing out leaflets about what is happening there.”

The Guardian notes that Roshid was part of a group of five Bengali men who travelled from Portsmouth in October to join Ifthekar Jaman, also from Portsmouth.

Details of the group’s journey via a flight from Gatwick to Antalya, Turkey, came to light in May when one of the five, Mashudur Choudhury, 31, became the first Briton to be convicted of terrorism offences related to the Syrian conflict.

Earlier this month, two houses in Portsmouth, including Jaman’s family home, were among properties raided by U.K. counterterrorism police.

A court has granted officers from the south-east counterterrorism unit until 28 October to question some of those involved in arrests following the raids which included Jaman’s brothers, Tuhim, 26, and Mustakim, 23 and his brother.

Shiraz Maher, a senior researcher at King’s College London’s International Center for the Study of Radicalization, told the Guardian that “It is probable that Roshid died in the battle for Kobani as another of his Portsmouth counterparts, Muhammad Mehdi Hasan, is known to be fighting there, although we haven’t been able to independently verify this yet.”

Maher says the center has so far confirmed the deaths of more than twenty Jihadists who have travelled from Britain to fight in Syria.

“The Portsmouth cluster of fighters is perhaps one of the best known. In total six men went to join Islamic State last year. Now three are dead, one returned to the United Kingdom and is in jail, and two remain fighting in Syria.”