Missing UK schoolgirls ‘have crossed into Syria’

It comes as British police rejected accusations from Turkey that they delayed informing Turkish authorities about three teenage girls.

CCTV images issued by the Metropolitan Police in London on February 23, 2015, showing (from left) Kadiza Sultana, 16, Shamima Begum, 15, and and Amira Abase, 15, going through security at Gatwick airShow more

LONDON // British police said yesterday they believed that three London schoolgirls who travelled to Turkey and are thought to be trying to join the ISIL group, have now crossed into Syria.

Friends Amira Abase, 15, Shamima Begum, 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16, flew to Istanbul from London on February 17.

“Officers ... leading the investigation into the three missing schoolgirls from east London, now have reason to believe that they are no longer in Turkey and have crossed into Syria,” police said.

Earlier, British police rejected accusations from Turkey that they delayed informing Turkish authorities about three teenage girls.

On Monday, Turkey’s deputy prime minister Bulent Arinc said Britain had taken three days to pass on details about the missing girls, saying the British would be to blame if they were not found.

But yesterday a London police spokesman said officers had contacted the Turkish embassy in London on February 18, the day after their flight.

“Since then we have been working closely with the Turkish authorities who are providing great assistance and support to our investigation,” he said.

The girls’ plight has prompted widespread concern in Britain, with prime minister David Cameron urging social media firms to do more to deal with online extremism saying the girls appeared to have been radicalised “in their bedrooms”.

He also said airlines needed new systems to vet children travelling alone.

The girls were all high-achieving students who had given their distraught families no indication of what they planning, but had been in contact via Twitter with other women involved with ISIL.

Sajda Mughal, director of the Jan Trust which works with Muslim women to tackle online radicalisation, said: “We hear day to day women calling us up with their concerns saying we don’t know how to approach issues with our children, we don’t even know how to use a computer to go online to see what’s going on, what kind of videos they could be watching.”`

Ms Mughal said many young people had grievances which the families were best placed to address.

“What is a very popular concern is the grievance with Syria.

“We can’t shut that debate down, we can’t ignore it because if we ignore that it further fuels the extremist narrative,” she said.

Anita Kokhar, a spokeswoman for the family of teenager Yusra Hussien who left Britain for Syria last year, said the way young people were targeted via the internet was more akin to direct “grooming” than being radicalised by videos or other material.

“These are just 15-year-old girls. They are going to go on the internet, they’re going to make friends, they’re going to be lured in by people out there who are sat there to take advantage and in this case it is extremists,” she told BBC radio.

“If they didn’t have headscarves on, and they didn’t belong to Islam, they are just young girls so it shouldn’t be different from any other grooming cases that are happening in the UK.”

Meanwhile, other cases of young women going to join ISIL have been reported.

Spain said yesterday it had broken up an online network accused of recruiting young women to join ISIL and arrested four suspects.

Two of the suspects were arrested in Melilla, the Spanish enclave neighbouring Morocco, in the latest operation by Spanish authorities targeting such recruiting networks. The others were detained in Girona and Barcelona in Spain’s northeastern region of Catalonia.

The two detained in Melilla were said to be behind the creation and operation of several internet platforms spreading propaganda, particularly for ISIL, the interior ministry said.

“In line with the strategy of the Daesh terrorist group, they focused on the recruitment of women who, after a process of indoctrination, would end up joining the terrorist group in conflict zones,” it said, using an alternative name for ISIL.

Also yesterday, South Korea’s spy agency said an 18-year-old man who went missing last month has joined ISIL and is receiving training in Syria.

The National Intelligence Service said in a report to a parliamentary committee that the teenager was receiving training at an undisclosed ISIL camp.

* Reuters and Agence France-Presse