Relatives of three schoolgirls suspected of traveling from London to Syria to join ISIS told UK lawmakers Tuesday that they were baffled by the teenagers’ decision to leave their homes and families.
They also had harsh words for the police, who they said failed to keep them informed after a close friend of the girls headed to Syria in December.
The three East London classmates — Shamima Begum, 15; Kadiza Sultana, 16; and Amira Abase, 15 — boarded a Turkish Airlines plane from London’s Gatwick Airport to Istanbul on February 17. They are thought to have crossed the Turkish border into Syria within days.
Amira Abase’s father, Hussen Abase, told lawmakers at a hearing of the Home Affairs Select Committee that he had no idea his daughter was planning to go or that she might have been radicalized.
Sahima Begum, the older sister of Shamima Begum, said her sister had been into “normal teenage things,” like watching “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” reading and playing games on her phone.
There was nothing to indicate she was radicalized, she said.
Fahmida Aziz, first cousin of Khadija Sultana, said that if the family had spotted any signs of radicalization, “we would have been very effective in stepping in and querying” that thinking.
She also said she had no idea how her sister accessed the money needed for the trip.
Metropolitan Police Chief Bernard Hogan-Howe is also due to testify before the committee.
Checklist found in bedroom
A handwritten checklist shows how the three schoolgirls planned their trip, according to Britain’s Guardian newspaper, which has seen the document.
The list was reportedly found in the bedroom of one of the girls and handed to police after her family realized she was missing.
It detailed items to buy, such as underwear, a mobile phone and cosmetics, and estimated travel costs, apparently totaling £2,190 ($3,296). The biggest single cost was the three plane tickets to Turkey, the newspaper said, at just over £1,000.
The list, written on a page from a diary planner, had initials indicating which of the girls was to buy what or who the items were for. It’s not clear where they would have gotten the money to meet the costs.
Police criticized over letter
Over the weekend, the girls’ families asked for an apology from London’s Metropolitan Police over the force’s handling of the case.
The families claim they were not told about a 15-year-old friend of the girls going to Syria weeks earlier — and say that had they known, they might have been able to prevent their daughters from traveling too.
The police said in a statement Saturday that after the first girl went missing in December, a police officer spoke to seven of her school friends at Bethnal Green Academy — including Shamima, Kadiza, and Amira — as potential witnesses who might have information about the missing girl.
A deputy principal at the girls’ school was present for the meeting and afterward contacted the parents of the seven girls, on the advice of police, and told them that the girls’ friend, referred to only as “Girl 1,” had been reported missing.
An officer who then spoke to the same group of girls on February 5 gave them letters addressed to their parents asking for further help from their daughters, the police statement said. But not all the letters were passed on.
“With the benefit of hindsight, we acknowledge that the letters could have been delivered direct to the parents,” the police statement said.
“However, the parents were already aware from the Deputy Head that Girl 1 had been reported missing, all the teenagers were all being co-operative, they were all being treated as potential witnesses and there was nothing whatsoever to indicate that they themselves were planning to travel to Syria.”
Days before they left for Turkey, at least one of the girls allegedly contacted a young woman, Aqsa Mahmood, who left her home in Scotland to travel to Syria in 2013 and is accused of trying to recruit others via social media.
She has posted tips for girls and young women wanting to travel to Syria to marry jihadis, as she did. Her blog also has links to advice posted by another jihad supporter, which recommends that those traveling to Syria seek to pack the essentials but not too much, since they may need to move often and at short notice, while remaining inconspicuous.
