These pictures show a teenage girl enjoying life in modern Britain before joining ISIS to become a ‘jihadi bride’.
She
laughs in the park, shows off vividly painted nails, and poses with the
athletics’ squad of her East London school, where she was top of her
science class.
On
Facebook, she writes of going swimming with a friend, loving the music
of American rapper Tupac Shakur and enjoying a birthday treat.
Few could have predicted what 15-year-old Amira Abase would do next.
Two
weeks ago, in the middle of half-term, she abruptly walked out of her
family’s council home in East London, wearing black jeans and trainers.
She
caught a bus to Gatwick Airport and flew to Istanbul with two fellow
Muslim classmates, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Shamima Begum, 15.
Next
— in footage captured by CCTV cameras — the trio waited in the snow to
board another bus to travel to the Turkish border with Syria. There,
Islamic State militants were waiting for them.
The
girls, by now dressed in burkas, were bundled into cars and disappeared
to a life where they will have to marry a fighter selected for them,
never step foot outside without him, and become a household drone doing
chores restricted to women.
Intelligence services say they may even be trained to become fighters themselves.
Amira
is not the first Western girl to join Islamic State. Police said this
week that 60 young British women, many of them schoolgirls, have left
for Syria. Few, however, have been radicalised so swiftly as Amira
Abase.
Back
in East London, her friends — many of them non-Muslims — have given a
series of exclusive interviews to explain how she had changed before
their eyes.
As
one 16-year-old girl told me this week: ‘She was perfectly normal. She
talked about having a lip-piercing one day, and listened to pop chart
songs.
‘She
was pretty, popular, and a bit of a rebel who saw the funny side of
life. I first met her in maths class four years ago. We became best
friends.’
Born
in Ethiopia, Amira moved with her family first to England, and then
Germany, before returning here and starting school at Bethnal Green
Academy at the age of 11.
‘When
I visited, I found her home was not overpoweringly Islamic,’ her friend
added. ‘We had a family meal cooked by her mother, who did not wear the
hijab at home. After eating, Amira and I went out to the park.
‘She had a BlackBerry phone at 11 or 12, and later an iPhone and computer. She was on them all the time.’
At school,
Amira, a Chelsea football fan, shone in debates, once giving a speech on
why Muslim women wear the veil. She passed three GCSEs in maths and
science early, at age 14.
This
autumn, she’d planned to study A-level history, maths and biology at
the London Academy of Excellence, set up for high-fliers under the free
school programme.
Her
talents did not stop in class. At 13 and 14 she was a star of the
school athletics squad, competing across Southern England in the 800 and
1,200 metres.
Although she
wore the hijab to class, covering her hair in line with Islamic
teachings, she abandoned the headgear when she played sport or was with
her girl friends.
A
member of the athletics squad explained: ‘Amira didn’t make a big thing
about her Muslim faith. She came to parties if there was no alcohol,
and we’d go shopping for clothes. She was one of us.
‘She got
friendly with a boy she met at athletics. We teased her about standing
very close to him, so she joked she was leaning on him for support. Her
parents would not have approved of a boyfriend.’
Yet last year Amira was exposed to a parallel world from her non-Muslim friends.
While
they were going clubbing, meeting boyfriends, and taking foreign
holidays together, these Western ways were forbidden to Amira because of
her background.
She
was expected to pray regularly, and was, her friends think, facing an
arranged marriage to a man of her family’s choice in the future.
Another
friend said: ‘We suspect she joined ISIS because it was exciting thing
to do; a way of rebelling. Unlike us, there were not a lot of exciting
options open to her.’
Shamima was
following 70 other ISIS terrorists on Twitter, too, many of whom, like
Aqsa, used a messaging programme called Surespot.
This
encrypts messages to avoid interception by intelligence authorities.
When messages are deleted by ISIS recruiters, they are automatically
erased from the phones of those who have received them.
Friends
suspect that Amira and the other girls were in touch with Aqsa and other
ISIS recruiters via their mobile phones or home computers since before
Christmas.
‘Amira
is portrayed by police and the school as naïve and vulnerable,’ said
one of her friends. ‘But she was savvy and intelligent, and used to
getting what she wanted.’
Police
were called to Bethnal Green Academy in December after a friend of
Amira’s, a Muslim girl of 15 who has not been named, disappeared to
Syria.
They talked to Amira and her two new friends, but concluded they were not being groomed by ISIS online recruiters.
Yet
one of Amira’s friends insists: ‘By the time the police came, Amira had
isolated herself from non-Muslim pupils. I am surprised the police did
not discover she was already fascinated with the Islamic State and
people like Jihadi John.’
Amira left
her family home in the morning of Tuesday, February 17, telling her
father she was going to a wedding. He believed her.
She
was carrying no luggage, although CCTV shows her and the other girls at
Gatwick before boarding a flight with heavy holdalls.
Who gave
them the bags? Was it an on-the-ground ISIS recruiter in London? The
question has not yet been answered. The bags contained the Islamic robes
and coats with hoods that the girls were wearing by the time they
reached Istanbul.
By
late morning on the Tuesday, Amira had texted her father, 47-year-old
Abase Hussen, who thought his daughter was at the wedding.
She said it was ‘a little bit far’, and added: ‘Daddy, I will pray my midday prayer and get back home.’
At midnight, the family reported Amira missing and were desperately messaging her school friends to see if she was with them.
One
of her old friends admits now: ‘I was getting worried about her. She
told girls in school that she agreed with what the Islamic State was
doing in Syria.
‘I feel that I have lost my friend for ever.’
She is probably right.
No comments:
Post a Comment