Heather du Plessis-Allan: Why 'Kiwi Jihadi' Mark Taylor needs to come home to face music

COMMENT:

No one wants Mark Taylor, aka the "Kiwi Jihadi".

Not Syrian Wife Number Two, who wouldn't even live with him. Not ISIS, who kept throwing him in jail for doing stupid stuff. Not even us, an entire country of people.

But it turns out he wants us. At least, he wants us to help him. Now that the party's over, he wants to come home. Guess it's not fun anymore over in Syria. Food is running out, the chances of dying are skyrocketing, and it's harder to buy a good slave than you'd think.

Fair enough if you find him disgusting. Fair enough, too, if you agree with the PM that we won't be fast-tracking his evac from Syria.

But, bad news. He's our problem and we are going to have to take him back at some stage.

The PM's not going to make it easy for that to happen. Jacinda Ardern made it clear that we're not flying in to pull him out of the danger zone. Mark Taylor needs to find his own way to our officials in Turkey, then buy his own plane ticket, and convince that airline to let a known terrorist onboard.

That's a tough ask. Which might have you feeling relieved. You might also be relieved by the stories that he's as thick as a retaining wall. He is, after all, the guy who alerted the world to where the ISIS fighters were by forgetting to turn off his Twitter account's location tracker.

But don't be fooled. Stupid as they say he is, he is still a cockroach who survives. He was on a US no-fly list and still managed to get to Syria and ISIS. He's also managed to stay alive this whole time against the odds. So, it's a fair bet he'll manage to get himself to Turkey.

We're going to have to get used to the idea that Mark the Terrorist is coming home eventually.

Which, actually, is exactly what should happen.

This guy should come home and face the music. He deserves as long in jail as our justice system can manage. Not only for joining a terrorist group that regularly rapes Yazidi women, beheads innocent foreigners and throws gay men off buildings. But also for turning on his own country folk. He publicly urged attacks on military veterans and police at ANZAC Day parades. That, in itself, deserves a heft stint in the slammer.

And, as I said, he's our problem. He comes from Hamilton. He's one of ours.

He's not Syria's problem. He wasn't born there. They don't deserve to have him roaming around causing trouble.

They've got enough to deal with, like rebuilding that country's roads, houses, schools. Like wiping out the last of the ISIS losers still hanging about.

They also don't need to deal with finding somewhere to keep Mark Taylor. Because it's not just him. There are hundreds of other foreigners in Syrian jails.

Eventually Syria will have to set them free. And they don't need those listless clowns wandering around waiting for ISIS to set up a rendezvous point for them to reorganise.

You're probably thinking, well nor do we. And you're right. We don't need that either. Which means we will have to monitor him for years, maybe for the rest of his life given how stupid he's said to be.

But that's the price we have to pay for creating the monster, I guess.

He is the Kiwi Jihadi after all.