For sheer hypocrisy, it’s hard to match the European nations that are refusing responsibility for dozens of their nationals who became jihadist “foreign fighters” over the past five years and are now warehoused in makeshift prisons in northeastern Syria. U.S. officials say about 2,000 foreign fighters from more than 50 countries are among the roughly 10,000 captured Islamic State fighters held in several dozen ramshackle prisons in Syria. The detention facilities are run by the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, the Kurdish militia that partnered with a U.S.-led coalition to defeat the Islamic State. The other 8,000 captives are either Syrian or Iraqi fighters. The Pentagon and State Department have implored European nations to repatriate their nationals for trial and imprisonment, or at least pay the SDF to hold them temporarily. But so far, most European nations have refused.

The Europeans protest that they don’t have adequate laws to try their nationals who committed terrorist offenses on foreign soil, and that they don’t have evidence that would stand up in court. They worry, too, that Islamist extremists in European prisons would radicalize other Muslim prisoners and then be released back into society in a few years, perhaps to commit new terrorist acts.

What peeves some U.S. officials is that the European nations shunning responsibility for Islamic State prisoners have for years been lecturing the United States about its immoral treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Facing a post-conflict dilemma now that’s similar to what the United States encountered with al-Qaeda, the Europeans are ducking the problem.

More From The Washington Post (subscription required):