(Bloomberg) -- British citizens who fought for the Islamic State abroad are better off dead and should be stopped from returning home, according to the country's new defense chief.
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, a member of Prime Minister Theresa May's inner circle whom she promoted just last month, risked re-igniting a debate on how to fight terrorism with his strong language.
He told the Daily Mail that those intent on bringing “destruction, death and bloodshed” to the U.K. are being “hunted down” and “eliminated.”
“A dead terrorist can't cause any harm to Britain," he said in an interview with the paper on Thursday. “I do not believe that any terrorist, whether they come from this country or any other, should ever be allowed back into this country.”
In October, Britain's terror watchdog said efforts should be made to re-integrate returning fighters, warning of a “lost generation” of young men and women radicalized by Islamic State.
Just this week the head of Britain's domestic spy agency told the Cabinet that nine Islamist terrorist plots have been thwarted over the last year.
The government and agencies are concerned not only by fighters who have trained under the group in Iraq, Syria and Libya, but also by so-called lone wolves who are often radicalized online and can carry out copy-cat attacks.
The latest U.K. statistics published show the number of terrorism-related arrests rose by 54 percent in the year to the end of September to 400. Arrests related to international terrorism, including Islamic State, rose to 292.
To contact the reporter on this story: Kitty Donaldson in London at kdonaldson1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Alan Crawford
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