"Hussen's own journey to the UK had been long and risky. He'd been
smuggled out of Ethiopia at the age of 16 after objecting to his
country's war against Eritrea. When he reached Germany he had to spend
six years in a refugee camp before gaining citizenship there. "Maybe
it was difficult for Amira to grow up in a foreign home," he said. "I
am not an overbearing father and didn't dictate at all. All I ever did
was support her."
https://news.vice.com/article/left-in-the-dark-the-story-behind-the-families-of-three-girls-groomed-by-the-islamic-state
Islamic State
Left in the Dark: The Story Behind the Families of Three Girls Groomed
by the Islamic State
By Ben Ferguson
August 3, 2015 | 8:10 am
As night fell over East London on February 17, Renu Begum sat
wondering why her sister hadn't returned home from the wedding she had
left for that morning. "We had no clue whatsoever where she was," Renu
said. "We expected her to be home at 5, 6 o'clock and it was already
8. It's not like my sister to be late for anything." Renu's 15-year
old sister Shamima wasn't replying to texts, voicemails or Facebook
messages. At that point, Renu rang the police.
Two miles away in another part of East London, Fetia Abase was also
worried. Her 15-year old daughter Amira had switched off her phone and
it was equally uncharacteristic of her to be out so late. "She doesn't
even like to get the bus if it's dark," Fetia said. "We live in Poplar
but sometimes she asks her dad or me to meet her just 15 minutes away
and travel back home together."
The families could have no idea that their children were on their way
to join the so-called Islamic State (IS). On February 17 Shamima,
Amira, and a third girl, Kadiza Sultana, were already on a plane to
Turkey, with the intention of crossing the border to Syria. Apparently
coerced by another student from their school who had already made the
journey, the three had hidden their plans from their parents to make
the near-3,000 mile trip. As details emerged over the coming days,
their departure revealed a stark new truth: That IS was actively
grooming children to join its ranks.
In a series of interviews over the next few months, VICE News
attempted to understand the families' plight. The circumstances are
unlike almost any other, because the children of the families are
alive and, on the face of it, have voluntarily travelled to a warzone.
At the same time, however, the families view their loved ones as
victims — of whatever had pushed them to Syria, and of what might
happen to them in IS.
Watch the VICE News documentary, The Girls Who Fled To Syria: Groomed
By The Islamic State here:
On February 18 police visited the two families. "At around 10am three
officers came round," Renu said. "They asked the same questions they
had done the night before. Where had she gone, what was she wearing,
had anything gone missing from the house." By now she'd discovered
that another family member's passport was missing and a pair of
bangles had gone as well.
"I told them that the bangles were worth about 200 pounds ($310). Then
about half an hour into the conversation the officer in charge turns
to me and says, 'Oh, but we all know where she is.' At that point my
mind just exploded." Renu looked at the officer's business card. He
was from counter-terrorism.
Fetia's experience echoed Renu's, but when counter-terrorism officers
visited her house at midday on February 18, it hadn't occurred to her
to check whether Amira's passport was missing.
Related: UK Police Say Three Schoolgirls Who Traveled to the Islamic
State Will not Face Terror Charges
"[The police] came round but instead of asking me questions, they just
spoke to my other daughter who's 13 years old," she said. "After the
questions they finished writing and then they told us: 'Amira has
flown to Turkey with Shamima.'"
Fetia said she then asked about Kadiza, a 16-year-old school friend
whose cousin's wedding Amira had said she was going to. The police
told Fetia they didn't know about Kadiza at that point. "That day, my
life was finished."
At that moment Fetia realized the police were not dealing with Amira's
disappearance as an ordinary missing persons case; her daughter was
being treated as a potential terror suspect.
Amira Abase
Sure enough, on February 20, the three girls became international
news. Shamima, Amira, Kadiza, all students at the same school, became
the most well-known Westerners to be suspected of joining IS. They
weren't the first people from the UK to join the extremist
organization — at least 700 are estimated to have made the journey to
Syria — but there was something about their age, gender, and the ease
with which the girls left that captured the public's attention.
Although the police deny telling the families about the girls'
whereabouts in this way, Fetia and Renu say this was the first time
they realized that when it comes to terrorism, even when teenage
schoolchildren were concerned, the families are the last to know.
Renu and Fetia were assisted by a lawyer, Tasnime Akunjee. He would
put their peculiar situation into context.
"The problem is that one wrong step and it becomes a terrorism case
for them as well," he told VICE News. "The kids have gone out and
joined a terrorist organization. Now any assistance that the families
give to the kids who are now, on one view, members of a terrorist
organization, would itself be a terrorist offence. What normal parents
do in normal situations, those options aren't available to these
families."
The three girls were not the only ones to run away from Bethnal Green
Academy. A fourth pupil, 15-year-old Sharmeena Begum, went missing in
December 2014, and while the other parents knew she had not returned
to school after the Christmas holidays, they presumed this had
something to do with her home situation. Sharmeena's mother had died
of lung cancer earlier in the year. She wasn't getting along with her
father's new wife and had decided to live with her maternal
grandmother in East London. In the absence of news of where she was,
parents at the school presumed she had returned to Bangladesh.
In fact Sharmeena had already joined IS and the decision to withhold
this was taken by the police and senior teachers at the school while
they conducted meetings between the counter-terrorism officers and
seven of Sharmeena's friends. Among them were Shamima, Amira, and
Kadiza.
"The school definitely had a responsibility to let us know what was
going on," Kadiza's cousin, Fahmida Aziz, told VICE News when I met
all of the families together for the first time in early March.
Amira's father, Hussen, said he felt undermined. By then the families
had discovered that the police had made one attempt to contact them.
Letters had been given to the girls to pass on to their parents two
months into the police investigation, seeking formal witness
statements from the girls about Sharmeena's disappearance. The girls
had hidden them, but the families saw this as a failure on the part of
the school. In normal circumstances they'd expect letters home for
even the most prosaic matters, such as a school photograph, an event,
or even if they were in detention.
Related: Is Your Child A Terrorist? UK Primary School Children Asked
to Complete Radicalization Survey
Amira's mother said that if she had known that Sharmeena had gone to
Syria she would have had a chance to stop Amira leaving.
"We would have taken her passport, we wouldn't have let her go to
after school club for revision, we just would have kept our eyes on
her," Fetia said.
Amira's parents were not informed by the police or the school. They
did not even know that their daughter had gone to Syria until they saw
it leading televisions news broadcasts.
It would later emerge that in fact Sharmeena was a much bigger threat
than either the police or the school realized. The recruitment tactics
used by IS were already at play when they began interviewing the
girls. Multiple sources working close to the case revealed to VICE
News that Sharmeena had in fact been attempting to radicalize Shamima,
Amira, and Kadiza since the previous September — shortly after she was
radicalized herself during the summer vacation.
An individual who works with radicalized girls on a daily basis, and
therefore wanted to remain anonymous, told VICE News that in fact this
is quite common.
"If there is one girl who has made contact with someone out there and
they've been radicalized, they will probably be asked to try and
convince others in getting them to believe what you do. It would be
something they'd naturally want to do and something they'd be asked to
do."
Amira Abase with mother Fetia and her two siblings.
The discovery of the letters prompted the UK Home Affairs Select
Committee to convene a hearing on the case of the three girls. The
group of parliamentarians, made up of members from the Britain's
dominant political parties, sought evidence from the families, the
police, as well as the Turkish ambassador, to find out what each knew
and when.
The families would use the occasion as a chance to put forward a case
for being let down by the people who were meant to be responsible for
their children. The police would take the stage to explain that
nothing untoward had taken place and there was no way of knowing that
the three girls were planning on leaving.
The surprise of the March 10 hearing came when Mark Rowley, the London
Metropolitan police's head of counter-terrorism, announced that if the
girls were to come home then he'd have no evidence to charge them with
any terrorism offences. It was an unprecedented result for the
families, who'd achieved their aim to have the girls seen as victims
in the eyes of the law.
Shamima's sister Renu appeared at the committee and described her
sister afterwards in an interview with VICE News.
"I wouldn't describe her as adventurous," she said. "She doesn't like
to go by herself to buy pint of milk, for example. She likes reading,
watching TV. She did normal stuff that normal people do. She was a
brilliant student. You don't question a child who's done her homework
and has got straight As."
"She wasn't particularly religious," Renu added. "She started wearing
a scarf in year 10 [when children are 14-15] because my mum asked her
to, but she didn't have a problem wearing it because all her friends
wore it and she felt like the odd one out.
"In a way she was relieved when mum asked her to — although mum would
still have to nag her to pray."
Shamima was naive and not religious, Renu said, but according to the
anonymous radicalization expert, none of this is unusual. "They say to
hand in coursework. To be really conscientious at work. Everything to
throw people off guard so they don't get suspicious."
The expert recounted previous cases she'd worked on. "One girl was
even scared to go upstairs on her own before she was planning to leave
the country. When she told me the process of how it happened she said
it was continuous, consistent, people speaking with them repeating the
same thing, over and over and over again that led to this person
thinking about leaving.
"Their propaganda has been so effective to these young girls," the
expert added. "One of them even described it as an Islamic
Disneyland."
Amira's parents always maintained that they were the last people to
guess their daughters had decided to travel to IS. Fetia would proudly
describe that Amira had interviews at prestigious colleges lined up
and that she was revising all the time for her GCSE secondary school
qualifications. She'd also torture herself with potential clues that
she'd missed before Amira left, such as her daughter's plea to change
her cell phone and number.
When the media came across footage of Amira's father at a rally that
was also attended by extremists, such as controversial preacher Anjem
Choudary, the family were unflinching. "This is a bit nonsense
really," Hussen told VICE News. "They label you a fanatic, and a
radical and a terrorist just for exercising your freedom. I was just
amazed to have that freedom and grateful to be in a country where it's
possible to go on a march."
Hussen's own journey to the UK had been long and risky. He'd been
smuggled out of Ethiopia at the age of 16 after objecting to his
country's war against Eritrea. When he reached Germany he had to spend
six years in a refugee camp before gaining citizenship there. "Maybe
it was difficult for Amira to grow up in a foreign home," he said. "I
am not an overbearing father and didn't dictate at all. All I ever did
was support her."
There was an irony in the way Hussen had started to analyze himself.
His experience had dragged him through UK parliament and police
stations and his picture had been printed widely across the media. In
many ways it had taken him closer to the heart of the British
establishment than most natives would get, yet despite this he'd
started to feel like more of an outsider than ever. He had even
started apologizing for his English language more frequently.
During our final meeting I suggested that Hussen must be feeling sad
about the latest news that Amira is now reportedly married to an IS
fighter. He paused. "Not sad," he said. "That's too small. Sadness is
a part of it but really we're devastated." While I'd failed to be able
to empathize fully with his situation, he'd succeeded in using English
to correct my misunderstanding.
Follow Ben Ferguson on Twitter: _at_fergusonben
Received on Tue Aug 04 2015 - 09:17:55 EDT