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No-return risk seen for British teenage girls travelling to Syria

LONDON — Three British teenage girls who flew to Turkey in an attempt to enter Syria will not be able to return if they join the Islamic State, according to a UK organisation for Muslim women.

A general view shows an area controlled by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, as seen from a rebel-controlled area in the northwestern Homs district of Al Waer on Wednesday (Feb 18). Photo: Reuters

A general view shows an area controlled by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, as seen from a rebel-controlled area in the northwestern Homs district of Al Waer on Wednesday (Feb 18). Photo: Reuters

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LONDON — Three British teenage girls who flew to Turkey in an attempt to enter Syria will not be able to return if they join the Islamic State, according to a UK organisation for Muslim women.

“I don’t think there is any return for them,” Mussurut Zia, general secretary of the Muslim Women’s Network UK, said on the BBC Breakfast show today (Feb 21). “I don’t see how they would be able to get back. Not for a moment do I believe the girls know what they’re getting into. I don’t think they will be told the true reality.”

The three girls travelled to Istanbul from Gatwick Airport on Feb 17, according to a statement from London’s Metropolitan Police Service. Ms Shamima Begum, 15, Ms Kadiza Sultana, 16, and an unidentified 15-year-old are close friends from east London. Although UK police spoke to the girls in December regarding the disappearance of a fourth friend, their departure has come as a “great surprise” to both police and their families, according to the statement.

Britons continue to make the journey to Syria, which has seen thousands of fatalities and a number of public beheadings carried out by Islamic State. Hundreds of British men and women have travelled to the war-torn country since the conflict began, UK police said. They arrested record numbers of people on Syrian-related terrorism charges in 2014.

The number of western migrants to Syria and Iraq since the fighting started is estimated at 3,000, with as many as 550 of them women, according to a January research paper by the Institute of Strategic Dialogue called “Becoming Mulan? Female Western MigrantstoISIS.” BLOOMBERG

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