Three teenagers, at least two of them British, are in custody at a central London police station after being stopped by Turkish authorities as they attempted to travel to Syria, London police said Sunday.
Two were 17-year-old boys from northwest London who had gone missing, a Metropolitan Police news release said.
They were traveling with a 19-year-old, the release said, without providing additional information on the man. Several media outlets, including BBC and Reuters, reported he, too, was British.
British authorities shared intelligence regarding the 17-year-olds with Turkish officials on Friday, and that night, the individuals landed in Istanbul on a flight from Barcelona, Spain, a Turkish official told CNN.
The teens were stopped, along with a third person who had been regarded as suspicious by Turkish intelligence working at the airport’s risk analysis center, which monitors risky flights and runs checks on suspicious passengers trying to enter Turkey.
Turkish authorities questioned the teens, the Turkish official said, and the Metropolitan Police said the three arrived back in London shortly before midnight Saturday and were “arrested on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts.”
“When we have intelligence shared with us there is no problem. We stop them and directly deport them. And of course Turkish intelligence is always on the lookout as well,” the Turkish official said.
Sunday’s news come on the heels of developments in the case of three British girls who are believed to have entered Syria to join ISIS.
Turkey on Thursday arrested a person who worked for an undisclosed nation’s intelligence service on suspicion of helping the girls, according to Turkey’s foreign minister.
On Friday, a Turkish television network aired a video purportedly showing the girls preparing to cross the Turkish border into Syria.