Between 500 and 2,000 Britons are believed to have fled the UK to fight for ISIS - and around half may already be back home.
Experts
believe that all of them will have been taught how to make bombs and
use weapons in the hope they may launch attacks here.
Many young women have also left for Syria to fight and marry jihadists, believing they can have a better life there.
A
major problem has been the relative ease they have been able to fly to
Istanbul in Turkey and jump on a bus to get into neighbouring Syria.
Here are some of the most notorious Britons who left to join ISIS:
Mohammed Emwazi, the British jihadi now known as Jihadi John
It
is thought that during the early stages of the conflict Emwazi was a
prison guard, along with three other Britons, leading to them being
nicknamed The Beatles.
Escaped captives had given him the name John, after Beatles lyricist John Lennon, which eventually became Jihadi John.
In
previous interviews, French hostages have described how Emwazi talked
to them about al-Shabaab and the war in Somalia, making them watch
videos of the fighting there.
But it appears he then chose ISIS instead and fled to Syria.
Emwazi
first rose to international attention in August 2014 when he appeared
in a video showing the beheading of American journalist James Foley.
Since
then he has been seen in videos showing the beheading of Steven
Sotloff, another American journalist, Peter Kassig, a former U.S.
solider.
Also
murdered at the hands of Emwazi were David Haines and Alan Henning, two
British aid workers, and Japanese hostages Kenji Goto and Haruna
Yakuwa.
Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary
Abdel-Majed
Abdel Bary, 23, rose to prominence after he was pictured holding a
decapitated head while standing in Raqqa's central square.
Bary is a former rapper who once had his music played on Radio One.
He
is understood to have walked out of his family's £1million home in
Maida Vale, west London, last year to join ISIS, telling them he was
'leaving everything for the sake of Allah'.
Friends
said Bary - an aspiring rapper on the 'grime' music scene - grew
increasingly radical and violent after mixing with thugs linked to hate
preacher Anjem Choudary.
He
has posted a series of photographs online, including shots of him
masked and posing with guns under the title 'soldier of Allah'.
In
other messages he called on Allah to 'grant us martyrdom', and praised
Osama Bin Laden. Bary, whose music has featured on Radio 1, is one of
six children of Adel Abdul Bary, 53.
Bary
Snr was extradited from Britain to the US in 2011 after an eight-year
legal battle that made him a cause celebre of the Left as lawyers took
his publicly funded case to the European Court of Human Rights in
Strasbourg.
Investigators
believe Bary Snr was one of Bin Laden's closest lieutenants in the
infancy of Al Qaeda and ran a London cell of the terror network.
He faces life in prison if convicted of involvement in the bombings of US embassies in East Africa in 1998.
Ifthekar Jaman
Ifthekar Jaman, 23, died last
year in a battlefield clash 2,000 miles from his Hampshire home last
December after bragging how life in Syria was '5-star' jihad
The young Briton boasted of fighting ‘5-star jihad’ in Syria but was killed.
Ifthekar Jaman, 23, died in 2013 in a battlefield clash 2,000 miles from his Hampshire home last December.
He
was one of an estimated 350 British men to have taken up arms with Al
Qaeda-linked groups in Syria – where they are known as British Kataa’ib,
meaning British Brigade.
Jaman
declared he was ready to die as a martyr, vowing: ‘I don’t plan to come
back. Life is for the hereafter... it’s an eternal paradise so the
sacrifice is small.’
He also urged fellow Britons to join him, using his Twitter account to glory in his hate-filled missions.
He described fighting in Syria as ‘5-star jihad’ because of its ‘relaxing’ nature.
Photographs
showed Jaman – a supporter of fanatical British cleric Anjem Choudary –
apparently manning armed checkpoints in the Middle Eastern war zone
just before his death.
Muhammad Hamidur Rahman
Primark supervisor Muhammad Rahman left his high street job for Syria, but died in a gunfight
A former supervisor at Primark who wanted to join the world’s most feared terrorist group, only to be killed in Syria.
Muhammad
Hamidur Rahman, 25, from Portsmouth, was shot dead in a gun fight in
July, a day before the Muslim festival if Eid, said his family.
His
father, Abdul Hannan, 52, an Indian restaurant worker, said the family
received a text message from a friend of Rahman in Syria who informed
them that their son was dead.
Rahman
is the second British jihadist from Portsmouth to die in Syria. The
first was his friend Iftekhar Jaman, 23, who died in December 2013.
Rahman’s
father, Mr Hannan, said that Jaman went to Syria first at the beginning
of last year, and then took his son there by contacting him through
social media.
He
said that Rahman did not tell any member of his family that he was
going to Syria, but suddenly disappeared from Portsmouth. Days later,
they received a call from him saying he was in Syria.
Mr Hannan said: ‘He asked us to pray for him, and said he wanted to become a shaheed (martyr) for the sake of Allah.’
Salma and Zahra Halane
'Terror
Twins' Salma and Zahra Halane, both 16, who have 28 GCSEs between them,
fled Manchester for Syria, have married warlords and hope to train as
doctors to treat ISIS fighters
Schoolgirl
sisters fled Britain to join ISIS and marry warlords and admitted their
pride at being known as 'Terror Twins' and 'loves' living in Syria.
Salma
and Zahra Halane, both16, who have 28 GCSEs between them, ran away from
their family in Chorlton, Greater Manchester, last year for 'paradise'
in the war torn Middle East.
They
have vowed never to return home after following their brother to Syria
and social media updates suggest the pair are training to use grenades
and Kalashnikov rifles.
The
twins are now believed to be based in Raqqa, Syria - an Isis stronghold
- where they are said to have already married fighters.
The sisters were hard-working students who hoped to train as doctors.
One
recent tweet from their account said: 'Training to be doctors to
Training to be killers... I will become a doctor for Isis not for these
pagans'.
The
pair left Manchester after sneaking from their bedrooms in the middle
of the night and caught a flight to Turkey, before crossing the border
into Syria.
Police
said the pair are thought to have followed their elder brother, who
also ditched his own ‘excellent’ academic career to join the ISIS terror
group around a year ago.
Abdul Waheed Majeed
Abdul Waheed Majeed was a father-of-three from Sussex who became the first Briton to blow himself up
The father-of-three was the first Briton to blow himself up.
Laden
with home-made plates of armour akin to the film Mad Max, he drove at
high speed towards a jail in Aleppo, Syria, before detonating in a huge
explosion which killed Majeed and dozens of Syrians.
Rebels initially claimed up to 300 inmates were able to escape.
The
video was reportedly shot by fighters with the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat
al-Nusra rebel group and begins with footage of the truck, followed by
shots of fighters exchanging heavy fire.
The rebel group said the suicide bomber was called Abu Suleiman al-Britani, a pseudonym indicating his British origins.
In the UK, before he fled, Majeed drove hate preacher Omar Bakri to his local mosque in Sussex twice a week.
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