Scotland Yard chief: British ISIS extremists should lose their UK citizenship

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe reveals that around 200 British national jihadis are now back in the UK posing a potentially serious threat to the country.

16:42 28 August 2014

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has warned that there could already be hundreds of British national jihadis that have returned to London posing a serious threat to the country. He suggested that British ISIS extremists should lose their UK citizenship.

Speaking on LBC radio, he said: ‘Certainly for us anything that either stops them from going or preferably stops them from coming back is a good idea.

‘If it works, we should do that. It seems to me it’s a privilege to have a passport and be a citizen of this country, and if you’re going to start fighting in another country on behalf of another state, or against another state, it seems to me that you’ve made a choice about where you what to be.’

Sir Bernard added that the number of jihadi fighters in the country could exceed 250.

He called for the return of the controversial orders which were used to tightly restrict the movement and behaviour of terror suspects. These orders were replaced in 2011 by less restrictive measures.

‘They were stopped because the threat was reduced and quite properly they were seen as too intrusive,’ he said.

‘But I think these things have got to be considered when the drum beat changes, and it’s clear that the drum beat has changed.’