Scotland Yard today apologised to the families of three runaway schoolgirls from London, believed to have joined Islamic State extremists in Syria, after the girls’ relatives demanded an apology from police over its handling of the case.
The Metropolitan Police chief, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, said he was “sorry” while giving evidence to MPs from the Home
Affairs Select Committee at a meeting in the House of Commons complex in London.
In response to committee chair senior Indian-origin MP Keith Vaz’s remarks that the girls’ families had presented
“severe criticism” of the force, the Met chief said he was “sorry if the family feel like that”.
The families have complained that a police letter about a school friend of the girls who was already in Syria was not
sent directly to them.
They insist that if they had known, they may have been able to stop Shamima Begum and Amira Abase, both 15, and
Kadiza Sultana, 16.
Sir Bernard said he was “also sorry that the letter that was intended to get to them didn’t get through”. But he
stressed that he did not believe that that failure was the reason the girls had decided to go.
The girls flew to Istanbul on February 17 and according to reports are now in a house in the Syrian city of Raqqa.
“We cannot imagine the anguish and the distress you must feel. Please would you accept from us our best wishes at this
time and our support to you personally on what you have gone through. It is every parent’s nightmare,” Vaz told Abase
Hussen, father of Amira Abase, Fahmida Aziz, first cousin to Kadiza Sultana, and Sahima Begum, older sister of Shamima
Begum.
Solicitor Tasnime Akunjee, representing the families, told the Commons’ committee that had the parents received the
letter they would have been “on notice” for issues like radicalisation and foreign travel.
His evidence comes as British Prime Minister David Cameron warned that police should not be made a “scapegoat”
and parents and schools must also help prevent young Britons travelling to Syria.
Earlier in an interview with LBC radio, he said, “Everyone has a role to play” in stopping Britons joining IS,
including politicians, parents, communities and schools.
“When you have got educated British schoolgirls at an outstanding school in Greenwich finding it somehow attractive
to get on a plane to travel to Syria to go and live in a country where gay people are being thrown off buildings and
British citizens are being beheaded, and appalling brutality is being meted out, we have a problem,” he said.
“Let’s not pretend this is simply a problem that can be dealt with by policing,” Cameron said.