Three British schoolgirls who fled from their homes in east London nearly a year ago to join the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group in Syria are feared to have been killed after their families lost all
Three British schoolgirls who fled from their homes in east London nearly a year ago to join the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group in Syria are feared to have been killed after their families lost all contact with them.
Shamima Begum, 16, Kadiza Sultana, 17, and Amira Abase, 16, all of whom attended Bethnal Green Academy in east London, ran away from home in February last year to join another school friend who had left in December 2014.
All of them were married off to men approved by the terrorist group to become so-called “jihadi brides”, with two becoming widows within months of arriving in Syria, their families believe.
Tasnime Akunjee, solicitor for two families of the girls who left last year, said: “The families are beyond words in terms of their levels of worry. They were children when they made the decision to go and we as a society should treat them as victims of grooming”.
“The last message from the girls was a very short one, saying that bombs were going off fairly close and that communications were likely to be disrupted,” she said.
In communications with their families in London, the girls say that ISIS has banned the use of mobile phones in the stronghold of Raqqa. Communications with the outside world via internet cafes and services such as Skype were permitted by the ISIS. One of the three teenagers had reportedly been in regular contact with her parents until recently.
