A British schoolgirl who was followed by three friends into the clutches of Islamic State in Syria has been named as Sharmeena Begum.
Miss Begum, 15, fled in December and was followed two months later by her Bethnal Green academy classmates. Footage emerged yesterday of the three teenagers, showing a middleman who appears to give them fake Syrian passports to cross the border from Turkey.
Mohammad Uddin, Miss Begum’s father, said that his daughter, who is now believed to be in Raqqa, the de facto Islamic State capital, had been a typical teenager who enjoyed shopping and was a fan of Rihanna and EastEnders until the death of her mother 18 months before her disappearance.
“She changed her dressing style and wore a headscarf and prayed five times a day,” he told the Daily Mail. “Sometimes she would go to the East London Mosque for prayers.”
His last contact with his daughter had been two or three weeks after she left, when she called him to say: “I’m in Islamic State and I’m not coming back.”
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Mr Uddin criticised the academy, saying that he had warned them that his daughter’s three friends were at risk. He had spoken to the three girls about his daughter’s disappearance but they had denied all knowledge.
It is thought that his daughter was being groomed online by Islamic State recruiters. Police officers gave the three other girls letters to take to their parents asking for permission to question them further, but they failed to pass them on and left London on February 17. All four girls are thought to have flown by Turkish Airlines to Istanbul before travelling by road into Syria.
Miss Begum’s mother had died of cancer in early 2013 and she was living with her grandmother when her father remarried. The wedding was attended by Kadiza Sultana, 16, who along with the 15-year-olds Amira Abase and Shamima Begum, who is not thought to be related, took the same path from Bethnal Green to Syria in February.
Shaky footage that appears to have been shot surreptitiously on a mobile phone, released by the Turkish broadcaster HBR, shows a middleman directing the three girls to a car and instructing them to use Syrian passports. They had been caught on closed-circuit television at a bus station in Istanbul.
Scotland Yard confirmed last week that two women, aged 20 and 21, were arrested on February 19 over the disappearance of Miss Begum.