American citizen ISIS fighter surrenders to Kurds in Syria.

The ISIS flag. 

An American member of ISIS has surrendered to Kurdish fighters in Syria. Fox News. The man has not yet been identified and it is unclear where he is being held, but it is known that he turned himself into to Kurdish YPG fighters. The YPG have signed an agreement saying that they will turn over captured fighters to their home countries. The fighter is not the first American citizen to have been captured after fighting for ISIS. In 2016 Mohamad Jamal Khweis joined ISIS and then turned himself in. 

My Comment:

It will be interesting to learn the fate of this individual. The last American ISIS fighter that we captured, Mohamad Khweis got off with a slap in the wrist. He was charged and convicted for aiding a terrorist organization and weapons charges and has yet to be sentenced. Still, even though he joined ISIS, the terrorism charge only has a sentence of 15 years, unless he killed someone.It doesn't appear that Khweis killed anyone when he was with ISIS but we have no idea if that is the case for this second fighter. The weapons charge will increase his sentence but the fact that someone could join ISIS and get out after a 15 year sentence is fairly disgusting to me. 

You would think that fighting for ISIS would make you eligible for the death penalty. Treason is still a crime in the United States and though it was intentionally made hard to prove, you would think that we would eventually be able to convict someone for it. And I think joining a terrorist organization that kills Americans would count as treason. I would be satisfied if we sent captured ISIS fighters to the death chamber, but I don't see it happening. 

Of course there are arguments against treating captured or surrendered ISIS fighters so harshly. We do want to encourage them to surrender. Everyone that does is one less fighter that ISIS controls and will end the war that much sooner. Perhaps only charging them with the more minor aiding a terrorist organization charge will encourage more fighters that might be rethinking martyrdom to give up the fight. 

One wonders how many Americans are still fighting for ISIS. I don't have good numbers on how many actually joined. Most articles seem to say that it is around 200, but all of those articles are from two years ago. We do know that compared to other countries, there are few members of ISIS that are American, and many of the ones that did join are likely dead. I would be surprised after ISIS falls, that we will have to deal with double digit numbers of surviving fighters. Hell, these two guys might end up being it considering how rare it is for ISIS to surrender and our new policy of killing every terrorist we can find. 

Still, we are probably going to be capturing more of these ISIS fighters and we will have to prosecute them as ISIS falls in Syria and Iraq. I don't think there is any reason to believe that we will be able to reintegrate or reform these people and I think they should probably stay in prison for the rest of their lives. 

What we do have to make sure of is that none of these people return as free men. Even as ISIS the state dies, ISIS the terrorist organization and religious movement lives on. If we don't work hard to kill and capture these fighters they can return to their home countries and commit acts of terror. We have to work very hard to make sure that doesn't happen.