Transitional Justice for European Foreign Fighters? What Colombia's Transitional Justice Mechanism (JEP) Teaches

Nearly 6000 Europeans traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State (IS). Following the fall of the caliphate, many of those IS adherents who survived found themselves trapped in a perpetual margin, held in prisoner of war camps, unrecognized and unwelcome in their states of origin. European citizenship norms have typically extended strong protections, but European IS sympathizers have found themselves excluded from those norms as European states develop new categories and practices to denationalize IS sympathizers. This chapter outlines European states’ resistance to the possibility of inclusion, rehabilitation, or recognition when it comes to those of their citizens that supported IS, driving new practices of citizenship marginalization. The chapter contrasts Western responses to IS adherents to Colombia’s transitional justice experiment, which is seeking to re-integrate citizen fighters after Colombia’s 70-year-long war.