London: The UK has been urged to bring home more British nationals from Syria by an independent reviewer of the country's anti-terrorism laws.

Jonathan Hall, who advises the government on counterterrorism laws, added that Shamima Begum, a young Londoner who left the UK in 2015 at the age of 15 to join Daesh and lost her citizenship in 2019, posed little of a threat because of the need to apply for a lifelong anonymity order and ongoing monitoring due to her relative fame.

In response to the issue of British nationals being trafficked in Syria, Hall stated: "I think it's inevitable that many of these people will come back. If it's going to happen, you have to make it happen as soon as possible.

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To join Daesh, about 900 individuals with ties to the UK traveled to Syria and Iraq. According to Hall, there are still over 60 former British citizens being held in the area, including children.

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"I have some sympathy with why the government took the decisions it did at that time, even though I think the long-term implications are probably bad," he said. "The government did face the prospects of hundreds and hundreds of capable men coming back.

"However, the situation has drastically changed because many people have been killed. When determining whether the threat posed by those who traveled abroad in 2015–17 and now still exists, being able to demonstrate that difference could be crucial.

Allies, including the US, are pressuring the UK to bring home more of its citizens from Syria.

According to Hall, the government must acknowledge that "the factual position on the ground has changed" and that mechanisms must be put in place to allow citizens and those who have lost their citizenship to return to the UK.

He continued by saying that these repatriated British citizens should be covered by temporary exclusion orders that permit the return of foreign nationals suspected of supporting terrorism, and that control orders could also be put in place for returning children.

He acknowledged that the adversarial nature of the UK court system and the admissibility of evidence gathered by security services made it difficult politically to facilitate the return of potentially dangerous individuals.

The UN's special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, Fionnuala Ni Aolain, gave a report on her six-day visit to the Al-Hawl and Roj camps in northern Syria in Geneva.

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Eighty percent of the 52,000 people still living in the camps, according to her, are children under the age of 12. She added that if the pace of repatriating foreign nationals does not pick up, it will take the camps nearly two decades to close.

The conditions in the camps, according to Ni Aolain, "constitute arbitrary and indefinite mass detention without legal or judicial process."