What the papers say: The worrying tale of the British IS bomber

Ronald Fiddler doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as Abu-Zakariya al-Britani, which perhaps explains the British Isis fighter’s decision to change his name. Either way, Fiddler’s death during a car bomb attack in Mosul has sparked an almighty row. It’s emerged that Fiddler is a former Guantanamo Bay detainee who was paid compensation – reportedly as much as £1m – by the Government after being released. The Times says the worrying element of this case is the flaw exposed in the way jihadists are monitored; ‘A chain of blunders’ allowed Fiddler to travel to Syria to join Isis in the first place, the paper says, and it’s difficult not to see in the final photograph of the 50-year-old, as he drives to his death, the face of someone ’laughing at the West’. What is troubling about this case is that if it’s true counter-terrorism experts find it tricky to track down the needle in the haystack, Fiddler ‘was a very obvious bushel’.