The two
Austrian teenage girls who became ‘poster girls’ for jihad in Syria are
now desperate to come home after getting completely disillusioned with
their new lifestyles.
Samra
Kesinovic, 17, and her friend Sabina Selimovic, 15, who grew up in the
Austrian capital Vienna, were persuaded to head to Syria and take part
in the holy war in April.
The
girls had started lecturing schoolmates about their lifestyle and when
they left Vienna in April they left behind a note telling their parents:
'Don’t look for us. We will serve Allah – and we will die for him'.
Left is
Samra Kesinovic, 16, who is thought to have fled to Syria to join the
Islamic State. On the right is 15-year-old Sabina Selimovic who went
with her - the two are believed to now want to return home
A photo posted on the girls' social
media accounts. Doubts have now been cast regarding the authenticity of
the picture - it's thought pictures of other people have been posted to
their social media pages
Once they arrived it is believed they were married off to local fighters and both the girls are thought to be pregnant.
Police
in their homeland Austria say that the girls' social media accounts
were taken over and manipulated to broadcast what they now think were
fake messages about the life they were having, and using them as poster
girls to encourage other young girls to head to Syria.
But
security service insiders have told Austrian media that the girls have
managed to contact their families to say they have had enough, and want
to come home.
However
they warn that there is almost now no chance that they will be able to
leave their new lives after they became internationally famous and the
images were shared all round the world.
Austrian
newspaper Oesterreich, which revealed that the girls now wanted to come
home, is known to have close connections to those investigating the
disappearance of the two girls and is in close contact with their
families.
Both
sets of parents had been trying to find ways to contact their daughters
and it is believed some way of communicating had been established.
A picture purporting to be of Samra Kesinovic and Sabina Selimovic, which was posted online sometime after they fled Austria
The
paper said that the girls are currently in the Islamic State controlled
city of Rakka in northern Syria, had been married to Chechen fighters
upon their arrival in Syria and were both pregnant.
Spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Karl-Heinz Grundboeck, said however that decision may be too late.
He said: 'The main problem is about people coming back to Austria. Once they leave it is almost impossible.'
The news comes despite reports which surfaced last month that one of the girls may have been killed.
However, these reports were never officially confirmed and the Interior Ministry could not ascertain if they were correct.
The
motivations of the two Bosnian girls are unclear but before leaving,
they had contact with Chechen youths, and visited a mosque in Vienna's
second district.And police also expressed concerns that the pair were inspiring their contemporaries after two other teenage girls were caught attempting to flee the country to join IS ranks.
Little information was given about the copycat
pair hoping to join Islamic State apart from the fact that one was 16
and the other was 14 and their parents were apparently from Iraq.
Police
now want to find out how they became radicalised, and whether anybody
had helped them plan their trip to Syria which was apparently set to
take place via Turkey - following the same route as the other two girls.
The
pair were caught when the mother of a third friend who was supposed to
be travelling with them became suspicious about the amount of luggage
her daughter was packing.
As many as 130 people from Austria are now believed to be fighting as jihadists abroad.
More than half of Austrian's jihadists originally come from the Caucasus region and have a valid residence permit in Austria.
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