Families Speak Of Heartbreak Over Young Girls Joining ISIS
Dozens of French teenagers, including a young Jewish girl, have fled the country to join Islamic State militants fighting in Syria and Iraq, French intelligence has revealed.
Jewish girl has joined ISIS, French intelligence official reveals: Dozens of teenagers have fled to Syria and Iraq from France to horror of families
Dozens of French teenagers, including a young Jewish girl, have fled the country to join Islamic State militants fighting in Syria and Iraq, French intelligence has revealed.
At least 100 girls and young women from France have left to join terrorists in Syria in recent weeks, up from just a handful 18 months ago when the trip was not even on Europe's security radar.
The departures are less the whims of adolescents and more the conclusions of months of work by organised radical recruitment networks that specifically target young people in search of an identity.
These mostly online networks recruit girls to serve as wives, babysitters and housekeepers for jihadists, with the aim of planting multi-generational roots for a long-lasting Islamic caliphate.
On the day she left for Syria, Sahra strode along the train platform with two bulky schoolbags slung over her shoulder. In a grainy image caught on security camera, the French teen tucks her hair into a headscarf.
Just two months earlier and a two-hour drive away, Nora, also a teen girl, had embarked on a similar journey in similar clothes. Her brother later learned she'd been leaving the house every day in jeans and a pullover, then changing into a full-body veil.
Neither had ever set foot on an airplane. Yet both journeys were planned with the precision of a seasoned traveler and expert in deception, from Sahra's ticket for the March 11 Marseille-Istanbul flight, to Nora's secret Facebook account and overnight crash pad in Paris.
The teenagers travelling to join ISIS come from all walks of life, and although most are first and second generation immigrants from Muslim countries, many come from white French backgrounds.
Despite ISIS repeatedly expressing of deep hatred of Jews, there was even a Jewish girl, according to a security official who spoke anonymously because rules forbid him to discuss open investigations.
Young girls are also coming from elsewhere in Europe, including between 20 and 50 from Britain.
However, the recruitment networks are particularly developed in France, which has long had a troubled relationship with its Muslim community, the largest in Europe.
Distraught families plead that their girls are kidnap victims, but a proposed French law would treat them as terrorists who will be arrested if they return.
Sahra's family has spoken to her three times since she left, but her mother, Severine, thinks her communication is being scripted by the terrorists.
'They are being held against their will,' says Severine, a French woman of European descent. 'They are over there. They're forced to say things.'
The Ali Mehenni family lives in a red-tiled, middle-class home in Lezignan-Corbieres, a small town in the south of France.
Sahra, who turns 18 on Satu
