The headmaster of a London school attended by three girls believed headed for Syria on Monday called for their return as police briefed staff and students on the threat of radicalisation. Mark Keary, headmaster of east London's Bethnal Green Academy, said the visiting police officers were part of a "support team" from the government's Prevent programme called in following the girls' disappearance last week.
Around ten police stood on duty outside the secondary school, as pupils made their way back to school for the first time since police on Friday launched an appeal to find the missing teenagers. Keary said police had indicated there was "no evidence that radicalisation of the missing students took place at the academy".
"It is clear that this is an international issue which is increasing in severity and it's affecting schools across the country and beyond," he said. Kadiza Sultana, 16, and 15-year-olds Shamima Begum and Amira Abase, left their homes last week and flew to Istanbul, raising concerns they would travel on to Syria to join Islamic State jihadists. Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday said he was "horrified by the way that British teenagers appear to have been radicalised and duped by this poisonous ideology of Islamist extremism while at home on the internet in their bedrooms.
"They appear to have been induced to join a terrorist group that carries out the most hideous violence and believes girls should be married at nine and women should not leave the home," he told parliament. Around 500 British nationals are believed to have travelled to Iraq and Syria to join the IS group. Sultana and Begum are British nationals, while Abase is a German citizen.
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