Prodigal scum: Terror fears as Australian jihadis return home from Iraq and Syria

EXCLUSIVE: AUSTRALIAN terrorists fighting in Iraq and Syria will potentially be trying to return home in the coming months, a think tank has warned.

• AUSSIE JIHADIS MARTYRED IN THE MIDDLE EAST
• REVEALED: THE AUSSIES FIGHTING WITH IS

AUSTRALIAN terrorists fighting in Iraq and Syria will potentially be trying to return home in the coming months or flee to a third country, a leading think tank has warned.

And the government would have to begin to refocus its attention from foreign fighters in the Middle East to those who are seeking to get out and inflict terror on the West.

The warning, which came as the National Security Committee of Cabinet met last night, is contained in a Lowy Institute analysis of the terrorism threat. The analysis predicts that military success against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria would mean foreign fighters seek to return to their native countries to spread terrorism to the West.

This new threat will begin emerging within the coming months, it warned.

It raised the spectre of another Bali bombing, which it claimed was orchestrated by returning foreign fighters from the war in Afghanistan.

The report claimed well-established smuggling paths through the Syrian/Turkish border would be the most likely routes — with access to Europe.

An estimated 110 Australians are believed to be fighting for Islamic State terrorist armies, while at least another 60 are believed to have been killed.

The authors, Lydia Khalil and Rodger Shanahan, said Western countries needed to urgently co-ordinate international border control measures to prevent a flood of terrorists escaping to the West from the collapsing caliphate.

“In the past five years, Western counter-terrorism agencies have focused largely on radicalised individuals going to Syria and Iraq,” their research said.

“Now and in the immediate future they will need to focus more on those coming out. The prospective collapse of Islamic State’s caliphate is likely to increase the number of foreign fighters leaving its territory.

“The fighters who survive and escape will be just as ideologically motivated as those that emerged from Afghanistan and Bosnia, but will be more operationally experienced, have more lethal skills and be better networked.”

Former Sydney cleric Mostafa Farag is regarded by Australian Intelligence officials to be the most senior Australian jihadist in Syria.

The report claimed well-established smuggling paths through the Syrian/Turkish border would be the most likely routes — with access to Europe.

“It is critically important that international security agencies understand the networks that these individuals have formed, the routes they intend to use to leave Syria and Iraq, and their ­intentions once they have left the battlefield,” the report said.

“This will require a more co-ordinated international response rather than multiple national approaches.”

Australia was one of the first countries to introduce specific foreign fighter laws in order to give police and national security agencies greater powers to detain and arrest returning jihadists­.