US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, called on the UK and France to bring back ISIS fighters from Iraq and Syria.
Blinken said: “This situation is simply untenable. It just can’t persist indefinitely.
“The United States continues to urge countries – including coalition partners – to repatriate, rehabilitate and, where applicable, prosecute its citizens.”
On the other hand, he praised Italy as one of the few western European nations to repatriate its citizens.
He also hailed efforts by central Asian nations such as Kazakhstan, which he said had brought back 600 fighters and their family members and put them in rehabilitation programmes.
For its part, the US declared it has a small number of citizens traveling to Syria, but it says it has repatriated 28 Americans: 12 adults and 16 children.
There are currently 60,000 former ISIS supporters held at al-Hawl camp in northern Syria.
US former President Donald Trump has pressured western countries to repatriate their ISIS fighters, who the Pentagon says are being held in “pop-up prisons” in northeastern Syria.
Trump previously threatened to drop “thousands” of ISIS fighters into Europe should the various countries continue to shy away from taking them back.
“We’re holding thousands of ISIS fighters right now, and Europe has to take them,” he told reporters in August 2020.
“If Europe doesn’t take them, I’ll have no choice but to release them into the countries from which they came, which is Germany and France and other places.”
