TerrorismU.K.: 3 London girls who traveled to Syria to join ISIS not regarded as terrorists

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, commissioner of the Metropolitan police (Met), has announced that the three London girls who allegedly stole jewelry from their parents to fund a trip to join the Islamic State (ISIS) may return to the United Kingdom without fear of being prosecuted for terrorism.

“We have no evidence in this case that these three girls are responsible for any terrorist offenses,” said Mark Rowley, the Met’s chief of counterterrorism. “They have no reason to fear, if nothing else comes to light, that we will be treating them as terrorists.”

The teenage girls, Shamima Begum, Kadiza Sultana, and Amira Abase attended Bethnal Green Academy, the same east London school attended by another teenage girl who fled to join ISIS in December 2014.

The Met has acknowledged that the three girls received a letter from authorities to pass along to their parents saying a friend of the girls had fled to join ISIS and that authorities needed permission to take formal statements from the girls. The girls never delivered the letters to their parents, and instead hid them in their school textbooks in their bedrooms. The girls’ families found the letters after they left for Syria. Hogan-Howe has since apologized to the families saying “the letter we intended to get through, didn’t get through. It’s clear that failed. It was intended for them and failed and for that of course we’re sorry.”

The Guardian reports that in a session with the U.K. Home Affairs Committee, committee chair Keith Vaz MP told Hogan-Howe and Rowley, “This is a huge propaganda coup for ISIS and a big blow to the credibility of what is supposed to be … the best police service in the world.”

“It needed that letter to go to the parents … not to hand the letter to a 15-year-old girl.”

Renu Begum, sister of Shamima Begum, told the Guardian, “We would have been able to prevent it if we knew there was a terrorism investigation by SO15 (the Met’s counterterrorism command); it would have made us know how serious it was … We were not in the loop, we were kept in the dark.”

The Met’s case to lawmakers has been that they could not have known that the girls were planning to join ISIS if their own families did not suspect anything. “There was nothing more we could have done to prevent that. Because, at the beginning, we were trying to get from these girls information about a further young woman who had actually left in December. That was our principle reason for talking to that family,” said Hogan-Howe.

“In hindsight we now know that these girls were planning to go and neither the family, the police, the school nor anyone else realized that,” he added.

To date, British law enforcement has made arrests and progress in investigating people behind the flow of more than eighty young people to ISIS territories. According to Rowley, at least eighty-seven families have approached the Met about their loved ones traveling to join militant groups in the Middle East. Just last month, two young women were arrested for alleged child abduction offenses by detectives looking into the travel of the fifteen-year-old girl. At least 700 Britons have traveled to ISIS-held territories, said Hogan-Howe.

The Turkish ambassador to the United Kingdom, Abdurrahman Bilgi, told the home affairs committee that British delays in information sharing made it difficult for Turkish officials to stop the three girls from crossing into ISIS territory. The girls left the United kingdom on Tuesday, 17 February, but Turkish embassy officials only received notice via email a few days later, Bilgic said. “I think the primary obligation is on the shoulders of the source country because they should be stopped at the source country before exiting the country,” Bilgic said.

“You know the enormous pressure on the shoulders of Turkey. Our neighborhood is not a rose garden.”