Missing UK Teens Among Growing Trend Of Syria-Bound Young People
The missing UK teen girls who boarded a flight bound for Istanbul at London’s Gatwick Airport on February 17 are just three more in a disturbing trend that only seems to be growing among the world’s population of young people who are being brainwashed into following a radicalized form of Islam.
Shamima Begum and Amira Abase, both 15-years-old; and Kadiza Sultana, 16-years-old, were caught on surveillance camera in Istanbul, Turkey, as they were boarding a bus. According to CNN, it’s the first time the girls have been spotted since they ran away from home. As Turkey, which borders Syria, is a gateway for those volunteering to join the radical militant group ISIS, it is believed that that is where the three were headed. Though why the airline, as well as UK security services failed to consider three teen girls travelling to Turkey unaccompanied a red flag is yet to be seen.
The three missing girls were believed to have been recruited by 19-year-old Aqsa Mahmood, who left her home in Scotland in November of 2013 to join ISIS forces in Syria. The Inquisitr previously reported that at least one of the teens had been in touch with Mahmood via social media days before the three girls boarded the plane to Turkey. The Mahmood family attorney expressed her family’s surprise that the police hadn’t informed the teens’ parents about the alleged contact with Aqsa, “because they understood that Aqsa’s social media content was being closely monitored by the security services.”
Unfortunately, these three girls are not the only young people to have been indoctrinated into the skewed version of Islam touted by extremists. According to the Telegraph, “Nearly 20 teenage girls have travelled to Syria to join Isil in the past year after being ‘carefully prepared’ for travel to ensure they don’t stand out,” said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball, who is the National Counter Terrorism Coordinator for the Metropolitan Police Department.
Furthermore, the report of the missing UK teens comes hot on the heels of another six teenagers who went missing from Quebec, Canada, in January, and are believed to have also joined the jihadist group. Among the six teens are four men and two women, all of whom were students of, or were connected in some way, to Adil Charkaoui, the president of the Islamic Community Center of Montreal East. Charkaoui, among others, rented rooms from the College de Maisonneuve CEGEP, where all six of the missing were students, and where four of them were registered for, and attended classes during the Fall 2014 session. The college has since suspended all contracts with the renting parties, reported CTV Montreal. Charkaoui, and the Islamic Community Center deny all allegations of a connection to the six students.
The missing UK teens are just the latest in a rapidly expanding list of young, easily influenced girls and boys, who seem to be searching for their own religious truths, but are instead being manipulated into believing those truths lay in extremism and terrorism.
[image Credit: ABC News]
