The UK will have to shell out a whopping 25 million pounds a week to keep a watch on its 350 radicalised citizens who have returned from Syria and Iraq and are followers of the dreaded IS terror outfit.
According to a security expert, round-the-clock surveillance of the radicalised Britons would require a team of at least 10 people to monitor each one at a hefty cost of 10,000 pounds a day.
“To track one person effectively takes at least 10, or more probably 15 people, which would cost at least 10,000 pound a day, not including other measures such as the monitoring of mobile phones and email traffic,” said Colonel Richard Kemp, former head of counter terrorism at the Cabinet Office.
“Then you have to observe the people they speak to, so the network expands,” Kemp was quoted as saying by the Daily Express.
UK’s police and intelligence services are already keeping a watch on more than 2,000 terrorist suspects as last year’s 385 terror-related arrests has already been exceeded this year.
“My view is that they should not be allowed to come back.
Can you imagine us letting people going out to fight with the Nazis during the Second World War back into Britain? it’s ridiculous. Those people who return from Syria and Iraq are far more dangerous,” Kemp said.
At least half of the 700 Britons known to have travelled to areas controlled by the IS have come back to the UK potentially “more trained, more angry and more radicalised”, Scotland Yard counter-terror chief Mark Rowley said.
Under the UK’s anti-radicalisation process, psychologists are used to determine their state of mind and weekly meetings are held to determine the level of risk.
The government is also using family courts to prevent children travelling to Syria and Iraq, the report said.