At least five Britons travel to Iraq and Syria every week to join the fight for Islamic State, the UK’s most senior police officer, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has said.
“Five a week doesn’t sound much but when you realise there are 50 weeks in a year, 250 more would be 50 per cent more than we think have gone already. Those numbers are a minimum. 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,” he said.
Hogan-Howe added that the return of “potentially militarised individuals” to the streets of the UK “is a risk to our communities”.