Miguel beat me to post wit the story (Real) Real Wife of ISIS wants to return to the US, but I had my own thoughts on this that I wanted to share.

I did some business traveling earlier this week which is why my posting has been light.

I had a long dive during the trip and was listening to a news report on NPR from the UK about the number of returning ISIS fighters to Britain.  They are getting swamped.

One of the issues going on in the UK is that of the thousands of returning ISIS fighters, only 10 have been prosecuted for what they have done.

The person being interviewed said, that pretty much, even though everyone knows what ISIS is doing, there is not enough evidence that one specific fighter committed a specific crime overseas and therefore can be prosecuted in court.  It’s not a crime to travel to Syria, so someone can fight for ISIS and then come back to Britain and say they were just visiting family and there really isn’t much the British government can do to hold that person accountable.

So, back to the US.  From AL.com

Alabama woman who joined ISIS wants to come home, report says

A Hoover woman who traveled to Syria and joined ISIS wants to come back home, according to a recent interview.

In an interview with The Guardian released Monday morning, Hoda Muthana said she “deeply regrets” joining the Islamic State.

“I don’t know, I thought I was doing things correctly for the sake of God,” she said in the recorded interview. “And when I came here and saw everything with my own eyes I realized I’ve made a big mistake.”

According to a report from The Guardian, Muthana was captured by Kurdish forces after fleeing the last area of land controlled by ISIS and is currently in a refugee camp in northern Syria. She has an 18-month-old son, the report said.

According to a report from USA Today, Muthana was married three times in Syria. Her first two husbands died fighting for ISIS, and she is believed to be the only American woman inside the al-Hawl refugee camp. Her current legal status is not clear, the report said, and immigration officials have not commented about her case.

Then there is also this.

Alabama woman who joined ISIS ‘ready to face the consequences’

A report from The Guardian published Monday morning said she is pleading to return home to Alabama.

“She tremendously regrets how misguided she was and recognizes she may have destroyed her life and the life of her child,” Hassan Shibly told AL.com over the phone Monday afternoon. Shibly is an attorney for CAIR Florida and has represented Muthana’s family since she left home. “She wants to face the consequences and protect others from repeating those mistakes she made. She’s just another victim of these monsters.”

What consequences?

Yes, it is a crime in the United States to “provide material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization.”

But in all the cases I’ve seen where someone has been charged with that, there was evidence that the individual was trying to commit a terrorist attack on US soil or was fundraising for ISIS.

I am not a lawyer, but reading the statues, conceivably, someone could travel to the Middle East, fight for ISIS and return to the US leaving all evidence of their crimes overseas.

“I’m vising my family in Turkey.” Then drive into Syria, kill US troops, drive back into Turkey, fly home.

This woman made the mistake of confessing that she was an ISIS bride.  As news of this spreads, I fear that the US citizens and residents who want to fight for terrorist cells overseas will get better at figuring out how to travel in such a way that the evidence of their terrorist activities are left in war zones where American prosecutors can’t obtain evidence.

I believe deeply in the rights of the accused.  It is an important part of our Constitution.  In the United States.

In a foreign war zone, fuck you with a Hellfire launched from a Reaper.

This is my blind spot.   Since prosecuting returning ISIS fighters will become more and more difficult, this is a situation easily avoided by killing US citizens fighting with terrorists abroad.  If you go and fight along side a terrorist cell, you can die along side them with no special consideration.

Here is where this gets more complicated and I start to predict things.

From Fox News.

How Minneapolis’ Somali community became the terrorist recruitment capital of the US

More men and boys from a Somali American community in Minneapolis have joined – or attempted to join – a foreign terrorist organization over the last 12 years than any other jurisdiction in the country.

FBI stats show 45 Somalis left to join the ranks of either the Somalia-based Islamic insurgency al-Shabab, or the Iraq- and Syria-based ISIS combined. And as of 2018, a dozen more had been arrested with the intention of leaving to support ISIS. Both numbers are far higher than those of alleged terrorist wannabes who left or attempted to leave the country from other areas in the country where Muslim refugees have been resettled.

From the Star Tribune.

Feds have at least six open cases looking at ISIS support in Minnesota

In addition to Al-Madioum’s case, the Star Tribune has identified at least five other open investigations alleging ISIS support in Minnesota, with cases from 2015 to as recently as late last year.

From the Duluth News Tribune.

Minnesota, Twin Cities show unusually active rate of terror recruitment, study shows

An unprecedented “cluster” of Minnesotans aspiring to become jihadists overseas fueled the nation’s highest rate of terrorism recruitment, according to a new study that also found that attempts to travel to Syria or Iraq are on a steady decline since 2015.

The number of Americans to successfully join the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is just a fraction of the several thousand Europeans who have made it into the group’s ranks. But researchers at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism found that Minnesota, particularly the Twin Cities, has seen an unusually active rate of jihadist mobilization with roots in an earlier wave of departures to join Somalia’s Al-Shabab militants in the late 2000s.

In a report released Monday called “The Travelers: American Jihadists in Syria and Iraq,” three terrorism scholars described a Twin Cities cluster more akin to terror conspiracy hubs in Belgian and French neighborhoods than the more common one- and two-off efforts more typically foiled by American law enforcement.

This is the Congressional district of the Media’s second most favorite Congressional Freshman, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Mogadishu MN 5th).

We know that she has already used her connections to try and have the sentences reduced for Somalis trying to join ISIS.

She is a supporter, fundraiser for, and banquet keynote speaker with CAIR, which is the group providing legal help for Hoda Muthana.

So one might be inclined to predict that among the legislative priorities that will come from out of the House with the 116th Congress of the United States will be more protections for US citizens who travel abroad to fight for terrorists when they decided to come back home.

Why do I say this?

Well we can see how the Democrats of the House and Senate prefer illegals to US citizens.

We can see how they put a terrorist supporting Congressional Freshman on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

We know that the Democrats love everything European, especially Media darling AOC and her love affair with the Labour Party, and that Jeremy Corbyn said ISIL supporters should not be prosecuted for ‘expressing a political point of view,‘ Jeremy Corbyn calls for ISIS bride Shamima Begum’s ‘return to Britain,‘ and Labour MEPs vote to open door to returning ISIS fighters.

Since 1+1+1 = 3, it’s not far fetched to think that soon enough, the Democrats will support allowing US citizens who fought for ISIS to come home and live free in the US.