The families of three London schoolgirls who ran away to Syria told MPs today that they saw no signs of radicalisation in the youngsters and blamed the police for failing to stop them.
Sahima Begum, whose 15-year-old sister Shamima is one of the fugitives, Fahmida Aziz, whose cousin Kadiza Sultana, 16, has fled, and Hussen Abase, whose 15-year-old daughter Amira is missing, said they felt let down by the Metropolitan Police for mishandling the disappearances.
Parents were not informed that another girl from the trio’s circle of friends had previously fled to Syria, and the search in Turkey for the three appeared to have been botched, the families said.
They insisted they did not see anything to alert them in the days before the disappearances, or have any idea how the girls got hold a large sum of money – estimated to be more than a thousand pounds – to pay for their travel.
“My sister was into normal teenage things. She used to watch Keeping Up With The Kardashians,” Ms Begum told a special hearing of the home affairs select committee. “I know for a fact that my sister didn’t have access to that kind of money.”
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“There weren’t any signs to recognise, any changes,” said Mrs Aziz. “If we had noticed anything we would have been very effective at stepping in, but we didn’t notice anything.”
Met Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the national police lead for counter-terrorism, later told the committee that police believe the girls stole from their families to raise the money for their flights.
“We think it’s linked to taking jewellery from one of their family members,” he said.
The family members were strongly critical of Scotland Yard for imposing a blanket of secrecy on the fact that a close friend of the three girls had already run away to Syria in December.
Unbeknownst to the families, counter-terrorism officers interviewed the girls about their friend’s disappearance at least twice, in December and again in February, and may have discussed it informally with the girls on other occasions on the school campus, they told MPs.
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But the police reportedly ordered the girls not to discuss the disappearance at home, and gave a similar instruction to the school they all attended, not to inform parents what had happened.
When a letter was eventually written to send home to parents, a police officer handed the letter – open, and not in an envelope - to the girls to put in their bookbags, the families complained. The letters never arrived home, and soon afterwards the girls fled.
“It could be possible [that the letter triggered the girls to travel abroad], but we just don’t know,” said Ms Begum.
Tasnime Akunjee, a lawyer for the families, said that Scotland Yard owed them an apology for failing to ensure the letter arrived in the parents’ hands.
“If it had, then issues about radicalisation and foreign travel would have floated to the fore, and they could maybe address it. That was the critical factor,” said Mr Akunjee. He complained that the police officer who was reportedly careless about getting the letter home had been appointed as liaison officer to the Begum family.
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None of the family members could explain why they girls might have left. “Reflecting on it right now, the first girl was a close friend of theirs and it could be they just wanted to see their friend. We really don’t know,” said Mrs Aziz.
“It is a very difficult thing to understand the mindset of a 15-year-old girl. Justin Bieber is a difficult thing to understand for people of our age,” said Mr Akunjee.
The girls boarded a flight to Turkey on Tuesday and were reported missing by their families on Wednesday, but the Turkish authorities have said that they were not informed until Friday that the three had travelled out to join Islamic State.
CCTV footage has since suggested that the girls spent two days, from Wednesday to Friday, hanging around in a Turkish bus station waiting for a bus to take them to the Syrian border – a long period of missed opportunity to find them and return them to their homes.
The families were highly critical of the delay in passing on information to the Turks.
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“We were told there were police there on the ground looking for them. We asked if they had people there, and they said, yes, we do,” said Ms Begum.
“Obviously, messages aren’t getting passed on. Somewhere along the line someone is missing something out…
“I feel so let down by the police. We gave them everything, every step of the way, and all we were getting back was the same information we had given to them.”
Met Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe apologised for failing to communicate more directly with the families of the three girls - but insisted there was nothing more the force could have done to stop them from leaving. Questioned by the committee afterwards, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Met commissioner, said that the force was sorry that its letter did not get through and for the situation the parents found themselves in.
He denied, however, that police could have done more to prevent the girls going to Syria.
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“In hindsight, we now know that these girls were planning to go and neither the family, the police, the school nor anyone else realised that,” he said.
“That’s the sequence of events, the circumstances the parents find themselves in is a terrible situation and they must be worried sick, about how those girls are.”