A Scottish “jihadi bride” who travelled to Syria to marry an Islamic State fighter will be prosecuted if she ever returns to Britain, a senior police officer has revealed.
Mark Rowley, the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police who is head of counterterrorism, told MPs yesterday that work was “well advanced” in terms of bringing Aqsa Mahmood, 20, before the courts.
Mahmood, from Glasgow, is also implicated in helping to recruit other young British women to travel to the Middle East to be the brides of Isis fundamentalists. However, her family’s lawyer, Aamer Anwar, said last night that he was “extremely disturbed” that information about an impending prosecution should have been made public as it might jeopardise a fair trial.
Mahmood left her home in Scotland for Syria in November 2013, aged 19. Four days later, she called her parents as she was crossing into Syria from the Turkish border and by February last year, the former public school girl had become married to an Isis fighter.
She is now suspected of helping to recruit three London schoolgirls who travelled to Syria last month. She is alleged to have used social media to encourage acts of terrorism and to be in touch with one of the girls — Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase and Shamima Begum, both 15 — before they travelled out of the UK.
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The prosecution plans emerged yesterday in evidence to the Commons home affairs select committee. Mr Rowley said: “The Scottish woman who has been reported overseas — that case is well advanced in the work that is going on in terms of potentially prosecuting her if she ever returns.”
Mr Anwar responded: “The family of Aqsa Mahmood are full of horror and anger that their daughter may have had a role to play in the recruitment of these young girls to Isis. However, it is extremely disturbing that Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley should use the select committee to publicly announce their work as being ‘well advanced’ in terms of prosecuting her. One would hope that the Crown Prosecution would have concerns on the right to a fair trial and anything being done to jeopardise due process.”
In contrast to the plans that Mr Rowley revealed about Mahmood, Scotland Yard has no intention of treating the three London schoolgirls as criminals should they come back. Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said: “If they return home there are no terrorism issues here.”
The three runaways, who are feared to have joined Islamic State, are thought to have funded their journey to Syria by selling jewellery that they stole from their families, police said yesterday. They used more than £1,000 in cash to pay for flights to Istanbul at a travel agent in east London last month.
Mr Rowley told the home affairs committee: “We think it [the cash] is linked to theft from families. We think it’s linked to taking jewellery from one of their family members.”
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Relatives of the three girls, who have criticised the force for not stopping the girls at Gatwick, were sceptical of the police claims. Renu Begum, Shamima’s sister, told ITV News that the girls had taken only the bangles they were wearing and other items of sentimental value.