Phil Gurski, the President of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting and a Distinguished Fellow in National Security at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute (PDI), who was previously a senior strategic analyst at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) for fifteen years, spoke to the EER podcast about the legal and political issues for Western states in bringing their citizens who joined the Islamic State (ISIS) home.

Gurski documents the context of foreign fighters and the associated issues of domestic terrorism, specifically in Canada, over the last few decades, which includes not only ISIS but the Sikh extremists of the Khalistan Movement and Al-Qaeda. The security risks of bringing ISIS returnees back and the political resistance is discussed, plus the difficulties in securing prosecutions if they are brought back to their countries of origin. How to handle children taken to the ISIS “caliphate”, online radicalisation, deradicalisation, jihadists in prisons, and the interface between intelligence and the legal system were also examined.