British counter-terror police arrested two men on Monday at London’s Heathrow Airport on suspicion of terrorism offences linked to Syria, police said.
The men, both aged 21 and from Birmingham, central England, were held after arriving back in Britain on a flight from Istanbul in Turkey, West Midlands Police said.
According to sources one of the men is of Pakistani origin and the other is of Bangladeshi descent.
Pakistani man belongs to Faisalabad city of Punjab provience.
They are believed to have travelled to Syria in May 2013, police said.
British police have over the past three years arrested a number of people who have travelled to Syria over concerns that they are fighting with jihadi groups.
Unarmed officers from the force’s counter-terrorism unit detained the two men on Monday as they disembarked from their plane and they are now being questioned at a police station in the West Midlands area, which includes Birmingham.
Police played down any immediate terror threat.
“We took action this afternoon in order to ensure we can properly understand what activities these men have been engaged in whilst in Syria — not because they posed any imminent threat to the public,” said Detective Chief Superintendent Kenny Bell, head of the West Midlands counter-terrorism unit.
Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Monday that “hundreds” of Britons were believed to have gone to fight in Syria but said security forces were doing their best to monitor the situation.
In November British prosecutors dropped a case against a doctor accused of kidnapping a British photographer and his Dutch colleague in Syria.
Turkey’s government, which is fiercely opposed to al-Assad, has come under fire for allegedly turning a blind eye to militants and weapons crossing the country’s long border into Syria. The interior ministry report, published in several Turkish newspapers on Wednesday, said about 500 Turkish citizens had joined the ranks of the Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL). “Some have received training in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” the report says, according to press accounts.
According to extracts from a study by British defense consultancy IHS Jane’s published in the Daily Telegraph, some 100,000 militants are operating in Syria.
The militants have split into some 1,000 brands since the crisis began in Syria, according to the study, which is based on intelligence estimates and interviews with militants.
Syria has been gripped by a deadly conflict since 2011. According to reports, the Western powers and their regional allies – especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – are supporting the militants operating inside Syria.
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