ISIS: We've already got you a husband

And they would end it – they were promised – as jihadi brides in the heart of the Islamic State.

The two British girls were told to first travel to Switzerland on a phoney ‘holiday’ to avoid suspicion. Then they would make their way to Turkey, and travel to a dusty bus terminal in the east, then a safe house on the Syrian border.

Once there, they would meet Islamic State fighters and be smuggled over the border to be married off to jihadis.

One of the girls was even told: ‘You will stay there until you get married. Sisters all ages, as young as 15, are getting married ... My husband has already suggested somebody for you. We have a lot of brothers here.’

The girls’ orders came from Fatima (not her real name), herself a British IS bride. She gave them detailed instructions from Syria over secret encrypted messaging services on what to do, what to pack, and even what to wear.

One of the two schoolgirls Fatima was grooming for this dangerous journey was her own ‘innocent’ little sister Aisha (not her real name). She hoped the other – who had agreed to accompany Aisha and pose as her friend – would make Aisha’s story that she was going on holiday more believable.

But unknown to Fatima, this 16-year-old was a Daily Mail reporter posing online as a teenage Muslim girl to investigate the warped activities of Fatima and other IS recruiters on encrypted messaging sites.

Fatima’s plot was brought to a dramatic halt this week when – hours before Aisha thought she was due to meet the other 16-year-old girl in a smoothie bar in Leyton – officers swooped on the family home and told her shocked parents she was being groomed as a jihadi bride by her own sister.

Fatima was already known to police as a prolific online ‘groomer’ for IS. But the case begs the question of how many more British teenagers have already been dragged into the clutches of IS on these secretive encrypted apps that – terrifyingly – are thought to be beyond the sight of the police.

The persona of a 16-year-old Muslim schoolgirl from Hackney was created a month ago by the Mail Investigations Unit to see if and how IS would try to groom her. A Twitter profile was set up, designed to look similar to those used by other teenage extremists, and within hours more than 100 other accounts had connected to it. Conversations with IS recruiters began within days.

But although the recruiters openly advertised on Twitter, they would only communicate further using Kik, Surespot and Telegram – encrypted messaging apps used by teenagers across Britain on their smartphones and tablets.

One female fixer put the undercover reporter in contact with a Briton in her early twenties who went to Raqqa in Syria less than a year ago. This girl, whom we have called Fatima, then took over the messages to the reporter.

Less than a week after their first conversation, Fatima revealed she wanted the reporter to travel to Syria with Fatima’s sister, Aisha.

They were ordered to meet on Wednesday this week in Smoothies, a shop near Leyton station, while both wearing niqabs. 

There, they would get to know each other while booking a holiday to Basel, Switzerland, on Aisha’s laptop computer, using the other girl’s bank card. Later, the meeting point was changed to the Eat restaurant in nearby Stratford.

The girls were told to pack in secret, before leaving their homes under the cover of darkness and meeting at Leyton Station at 5.30am next Wednesday, May 27.

Dressed in western clothes, they would fly to Basel, stay overnight at a guesthouse, then book £120 return flights to Istanbul on Turkish Airlines at 12pm the following day. Once in Turkey they were to get a coach to Gaziantep in the east, from where they would be smuggled by IS fixers over the border with Syria at Tal Abiad, before being taken to ‘sisters safe house’ in Raqqa.

 

There, Fatima would collect Aisha – while the other girl would be found a husband.

The names of the individuals have been changed for legal reasons. 

(dailymail.co.uk)