Brigade of British Terrorists Fighting in Syria

Local Editor

The British Sky News channel gained the first access to a previously unknown brigade of exclusively British extremists fighting in Syria.

Until now, the existence of this UK brigade has been kept a secret, but it reveals that British security services have hugely underestimated the scale of UK nationals involved in the bloodshed.

In a series of wide-ranging interviews, the extremists, who have asked Sky News to protect their identities for fear of a backlash against their families in the UK, reveal that hundreds of young men from Britain have joined the fight along al-Qaeda and that "at least" four die each month.

They also revealed that the UK remains the largest single source of private fundraising for terrorists , outdoing countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE.
In the interviews, carried out by a US journalist the militants claimed they have no intention of attacking UK targets or waging fights on British soil.
One of the men, identified as Mustafa, is asked directly if he is part of al-Qaeda and why he insists on hiding his identity.

"I'm not a terrorist in any way. If people could see how much goodness we have in our hearts, how much mercy we have for people and how much you know we are driven by compassion to help other people they wouldn't think that we were terrorists.
"But this is a line that they have been fed and there are people that benefit from pushing that narrative about us, so I protect my identity."
This denial follows warnings from the heads of the UK's security services that young men travelling to Syria are being turned to extremists before returning home to carry out terror attacks in Britain.

Fighting on a mountain top in the northeast of the country, these men are like hardcore extremists.
But they hardly speak any Arabic and are dependent on one of their number to give orders on the battlefield.
According to the reporter: "It is pure comedy. The men insist they have a moral obligation to help in Syria because of the outside world's refusal to intervene in the near three-year-old civil war, and deny they are terrorists."
He further stated that a number of extremist groups include numbers of foreign fighters from the USA, Canada, Northern Europe, North Africa and the former Soviet republics of Chechnya and Dagestan.

The British extremists say their numbers are increasing daily and social networking sites are helping to organize the influx into Syria.
They know that returning to their families in the UK will be extremely difficult from now on, but in reality they probably won't get the chance - the fighting foot soldier's life expectancy in Syria is very short once serious combat begins.

A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: "Syria is the number one destination for "jihadists" anywhere in the world. There are thousands of foreign fighters in Syria, including large numbers of Europeans, gaining combat experience and forging connections with extremists.

"Some people who travel from the UK to Syria for "jihadist" fighting will pose a security threat when they return. We are concerned that al-Qaeda affiliates such as "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" [ISIL] and the al-Nusra Front are now able to operate in the large areas of ungoverned space that have been created by the conflict."
"We are aware of at least 200 UK-linked individuals of concern who have travelled to Syria, but the true number is likely to be higher."

Source: Sky News, Edited by website team