Two more girls have reportedly fled their home in Austria — and it’s feared they may have gone to fight with Islamic State in Syria.
The sisters, named only as Viktoria, 16, and Violetta, 17, disappeared from their Vienna home at 11pm last Saturday night and according to the Austrian interior ministry, the girls left with just their clothes and passports.
They left behind their the 46-year-old widowed Turkish mother, who lost her husband about a year ago to cancer, website The Local reports.
“Reviewing their behaviour over the last few weeks I’m convinced and worried that they may have travelled to Syria to join Isis and fight in the Jihad,” the girls’ mother said, according to the website.
“They were acting a bit strange but as a single mother I was always busy, so perhaps I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have… I last saw them on the weekend when they said they were going down to the shops, but they never came back.”
She said she began to panic when she checked the girls’ rooms and found the both of them had taken their passports, according to the Daily Mail.
On 10 April, they vanished from their homes, leaving behind a letter that told their horrified families they had gone to the Middle East “to fight for Islam”.
“No point looking for us: See you in paradise”, they reportedly wrote. “We will serve Allah and die for him”.
Sabina. (Photo: Interpol)Kesinovic and Selimovic are believed to have travelled to Syria to support the Islamic State – a claim fuelled by a series of photos posted on social media, which show the girls branding rifles and surrounded by armed men.
Ms Selimovic recently gave an interview via text message to French Paris Match magazine, saying she can “really be free” among her new militant colleagues — but experts say she was probably coerced into making the statements.
Ms Selimovic said: “I like to eat. The food here is very similar to Austria even if it’s mainly halal food.”
She added she could access cornflakes and Nutella in her new home.
“Here I can really be free,” Ms Selimovic said. “I can practice my religion.”
(Photo: Central European News)“I couldn’t do that in Vienna.”
But Austrian anti-terror agents believe the interview with the girl, who is now married to a jihadi fighter, was probably carried out at gunpoint — and friends and family of the girl claim she has told them in online conversations she wanted to come home, the Daily Mail reports.
CEN also reports that authorities who analysed the transcript of the interview are almost certain the teenager would have been threatened into keeping any anti-IS sentiment out of the interview.
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Top Comments
The good news is they don't have to die for the cause---just live under it. How do they like being covered from head to toe, not being allowed out in public without a male who is a relative, having no rights, not being allowed to drive, dance, listen to music, seeing the world through a couple of slits cut in a cloth? I doubt they had any choice as to who their husbands were, and I seriously doubt that their husbands treat them well.
As they say on the Disneyland Pirates of the Caribbean ride, "Thar be no turnin' back now!"
There will always be people who are mentally unstable and who develop obsessions.
It's always seemed to me that most organised religions take advantage of these people. Their obsessions tend to make them look pious and therefore prop up those religions in a time when people are leaving the illogical confines of those religions in droves.
FEAR (& the trappings of power) drives people - particularly the young who are unsure of themselves and are desperately looking for something earnest to hook into and be meaningful.......they simply don't realize that they're being used.
Our schools are failing in an attempt to teach kids how to think and how to reason and how recognize bullshit when they see it and hear it.........even from their elders.
I'd rather kids become obsessed with music, art & film than politics, religion & ideologies.
I'd rather kids use kindness as a force for good and critical thinking as an exciting means to self-empowerment and the way to solve problems.