Prime Minister Boris Johnson is planning to amend the U.K.’s treason laws to prosecute citizens who travel abroad to join terrorist groups such as Daesh.
The laws, which have been in place since 1351 and were last used to prosecute Nazi sympathizer William Joyce in 1946, have been described as currently “unworkable” by MPs with regard to jihadists returning to the UK from Iraq and Syria.
Proposals to reform the 650-year-old law include the widening of the definitions of what constitutes an “enemy” and “acts of betrayal” to apply to non-state actors, including terrorist organizations. Perhaps more controversially, there are also proposals to force people traveling to areas known to host hostile groups, or “hotspots,” to provide legitimate reasons for doing so in order to avoid prosecution.