Islamic State recruiters using social media to lure teens
Video purporting to show three British girls in Turkey on their way to join the Islamic State group in Syria is released by a Turkish broadcasting company.
The three girls – identified by British authorities as Shamima Begum, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15 – travelled from the United Kingdom to Turkey last month, from where they are believed to have crossed into Syria.
It has not been possible independently verify the identity of the girls in the video released by Turkish broadcasting company A Haber, who said the report was filmed in Gaziantep on Turkey’s border with Syria.
A Turkish government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to comment, confirmed the authenticity of the video.
In the video, the man the Turkish broadcaster A Haber calls a foreign intelligence agent speaks in English to tell the British girls that they will be in Syria within an hour.
On 21 February, a Channel 4 News report said that the three girls were believed to have flown to Turkey after boarding a flight from Gatwick. It quoted British police as saying the girls were “extremely vulnerable”.
Today the United Kingdom commemorated the role of British troops in Afghanistan.