William Hague, then Foreign Secretary, estimated in June 2014 that 400 British citizens were fighting in Syria, some for ISIL.
Khalid Mahmood, a Labour MP, estimated that there were at least 1,500 Britons in ISIL. A more accurate source from the BBC estimates around 850 people from the UK had traveled to Iraq and Syria to support or fight for jihadist groups. Former MI6 counter-terrorism head
Richard Barrett raised concerns about the potentially large number of radicalised fighters that had returned to Britain from Syria and Iraq. Journalist
James Foley was executed around 19 August 2014, on video by an ISIL member whose accent sounded English. The killer,
Mohammed Emwazi, was described in the media as "Jihadi John". In August 2014, activists in London handed out leaflets in support of ISIL outside the busy
Oxford Circus branch of
Topshop. On 7 September 2015, a Royal Air Force
MQ-9 Reaper drone conducted an airstrike in
Syria which killed two British-born ISIL fighters. On 3 January 2016,
Siddhartha Dhar, a British citizen of Indian roots, was named the lead executioner in an IS film showing the
executions of alleged British spies. On 21 February 2017, around Mosul a suicide bombing was carried out by a past inmate of
Guantanamo called
Jamal al Harith. His original name was Ronald Fiddler, and he also called himself Abu Zakariya. Britain's Conservative government had given him one million pounds over his time in Guantanamo. Fiddler's parents were Jamaican. He went to Tell Abyad. On 24 October 2017, it was announced that a British man who had been fighting against Isil with the Kurdish
YPG in
Raqqa had been killed whilst trying to clear land mines. This took the total number of British volunteers fighting Isis in Syria to six. A British citizen,
Shamima Begum entered Syria to join
ISIL at the age of 15. She visited
Syria in February 2015 with two of her friends. But Begum married an ISIL member within ten days of reaching Syria. In July 2020, the British Supreme Court allowed Begum to return for proper investigation of the case in the
UK. But, on 26 February 2021, the Supreme Court declared reversing the decision for court appeal and her return to the UK. On 22 February 2023, Shamima Begum also lost the legal case for her British Citizenship at the
Special Immigration Appeals Commission(SIAC). The case was dismissed for national security of the country. Sir James Eadie KC indicated that Begum “poses a risk of National Security”. ==Reactions==