Oral evidence: Counter-terrorism, HC 933Tuesday 10 March 2015
Oral evidence, 10 March 2015.
Witnesses
Hussen Abase, father of Amira Abase, Tasnime Akunjee, Solicitor to Abase, Aziz and Begum families, Fahmida Aziz, first cousin of Kadiza Sultana and Sahima Begum, older sister of Shamima Begum, gave evidence.
Chair
Order. This is a session dealing with the Committee’s ongoing inquiries into counter-terrorism and our revisiting of the report we published last year on counter-terrorism. I welcome to the dais Mr Abase, Ms Begum, Ms Aziz and Mr Akunjee. Thank you very much for coming to give evidence to the Committee today. Could I ask that the doors be now shut? The Committee and the public are well aware of the circumstances surrounding the fact that your daughter, Mr Abase, your sister, Ms Begum, and your cousin, Ms Aziz, have left the country. On behalf of the Committee, we cannot imagine the anguish and distress that you must have felt on the day they went and must also feel today, because they are still missing. Please accept from us our best wishes at this time and our support for you personally in what you have gone through. It is every parent’s nightmare that this should happen. Thank you for coming to give evidence to us. After we hear from you, we will also hear from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner about this and other matters. You are welcome to stay for that. We will then hear from the Turkish ambassador. May I start with a general question to all three of you? Mr Akunjee, please feel free to come in whenever you want to. Starting with you, Mr Abase, when did you first realise that your daughter had left the country to go to Syria?
Hussen Abase
On 17 February, and I reported it the same day.
Chair
Did you report it to the police?
Hussen Abase
Yes.
Chair
At that stage, on 17 February, did you think that your daughter, Amira, had left the country or was she just missing from your home?
Hussen Abase
Missing.
Chair
Missing from your home?
Hussen Abase
Yes.
Chair
Which police officer or police station did you ring?
Hussen Abase
My wife and I just called 999.
Chair
Miss Begum, you are the older sister of Shamima. When did you first realise that Shamima was missing and who did you notify?
Sahima Begum
She went missing on the 17th. She didn’t come home. We went through her stuff, generally looking for some phone numbers for friends. Then I came across the letter that the police had handed to her. When we found the letter, that immediately raised alarm and we called the police straight away. I called the police, and reported her missing. I also called the phone number that was on the bottom of that letter to say, “I’ve just found this letter among all my sister’s stuff. It hadn’t been handed to the family and now my sister has disappeared as well.” I think I was quite angry at the time that I made that call.
Chair
So did you do a 999 call as well?
Sahima Begum
Yes.
Chair
Ms Aziz, you are the first cousin of Kadiza Sultana. When did you find out and what did you do?
Fahmida Aziz
I speak on behalf of the family—
Chair
The acoustics in this room are very bad. You will need to speak up to enable all the members of the Committee to hear you.
Fahmida Aziz
On 17 February, Kadiza left for school. She told her mother that she was going to an extended school club that was taking place. She did not return home at the end of the day, so that raised alarm bells for the family. They were querying among each other.
Chair
You will need to speak up. I am afraid that we cannot hear you at all.
Fahmida Aziz
They queried among each other—among the siblings—as to where she was. That night, they were extremely worried because she did not turn up. The family reported her missing the following morning.
Chair
When did you all first discover that they might be en route to Syria? At the moment, this sounds as if they were just missing. You called the police. You did what any person would do and dialled 999. When did you first discover that she had gone to Syria or was on her way there, Mr Abase?
Hussen Abase
The next day, we were told that she was in Turkey—Istanbul.
Chair
The 18th?
Hussen Abase
Yes.
Chair
Was that by the local police or the Metropolitan police counter-terrorism section?
Hussen Abase
All I know is that it was the Metropolitan police. I have no clue where they were from.
Chair
They told you that she was in Turkey?
Hussen Abase
Yes.
Chair
And was that the same for you Ms Begum and Ms Aziz? Were you all told on the 18th?
Sahima Begum
We were told on the 18th. Three officers came into the house. We thought it was just part of the routine so we were asked questions like, “Where does she go?” and “How does she dress?” It was about a half-hour conversation and then the officer, James Leek (?), turned around and said, “But we all know where she is.” We said, “Sorry, what do you mean, we all know where she is?” They turned around and said, “She’s gone to Turkey.” That is how we found out that she was in Turkey.
Fahmida Aziz
The family found the letter on 18 February. I think that it was in the afternoon or evening. I cannot confirm that. They were also advised by the police that they may be heading towards Syria. We kind of raised questions with the police in respect of the letter, where it is stated that the previous girl in December was heading towards Syria.
Chair
Until that time, when you were told that they were going to Turkey, did you have any idea or inkling whatever that your family members—the three girls—were involved in radicalisation or had been radicalised? Had you any idea? Did it come to your attention in any way that they were involved in the kinds of things that it is alleged that they were involved in following this becoming public?
Hussen Abase
Not at all.
Chair
Nothing?
Hussen Abase
Nothing.
Sahima Begum
Not at all. My sister was into any normal teenage things. She used to watch “Keeping up with the Kardashians” and stuff like that, so there was nothing that indicated that she was radicalised in any way—not at home.
Fahmida Aziz
Kadiza’s family were not concerned about her at all. She was just going to school quite happily, coming home, spending time with her family—just the ordinary things. There was not anything unusual there for the family—
Chair
You need to speak up, Ms Aziz, otherwise we cannot hear you.
Fahmida Aziz
They were not concerned at all. There were not any signs for them to recognise—any changes.
Tasnime Akunjee
That is the same experience that the school had. They had recognised no indicators at all that the girls had in any way been involved in radicalisation. Indeed, those girls had had some contact with the police between December and February. The police themselves confirmed that there were no indicators or markers of those girls having been of any concern.
Chair
You mentioned the letter that you found. This was a letter that was supposed to be given to you. It was not given to you; it was given to the girls. Why do you think it was not given to you? Would it have been better if the police had handed the letter directly to yourselves?
Hussen Abase
That is a puzzle.
Chair
But do you think that the letter should have been given to you directly by the police?
Hussen Abase
Yes, as we are responsible for our children.
Chair
Secondly, in respect of how the police have handled matters subsequently, you, Mr Akunjee, presumably speaking on behalf of the families, have been quite critical of the Metropolitan police. What, in particular, are the families concerned about?
Tasnime Akunjee
Partly, a degree of misinformation or information that is way behind the media. The families were assigned police liaison officers, who they hoped to get information from about their children. But it turned out that the officers were feeding them information that they were getting from the media, which was rather an unpleasant experience. On top of that, we had a particular officer who—
Chair
Sorry, could I say to the gentleman who is coughing that he might want to step outside and have some water? It is very difficult to hear what is going on. Thank you.
Tasnime Akunjee
There was a particular officer who was involved in the reading of this letter to the children at the school and in handing those letters to the kids. That same officer also now happens to be a liaison officer for one of the families. The families are obviously very concerned about the fact that the letter never made it through to them through independent channels, avoiding the children themselves. But the officer gave the indication that it was the school that should have done so, not him, even though it is a police letter. He never informed the family from the outset, even though he must have known—you have read the letter—that the girls were in Syria. Rather troublingly, my direct involvement with him was that he had called the families and asked them to come in for a meeting at Scotland Yard. That was after the relationship had somewhat frayed between the police and the families. I had advised the families to ask the officer to contact me. Directly after that, the families informed the officer and the officer contacted me. I told him that that was what I was advising my clients. He then immediately phoned my client behind my back, not realising that I was sitting with them, and effectively advised them not to listen to my advice, at which point I took the phone and asked him, “Are you advising my clients not to listen to their solicitor’s advice? I want to speak to your line manager,” which I eventually did.
Chair
We will come on to the other aspects, but in respect of the letter, Miss Begum, if you and the other families had received that letter rather than it going to the girls, what would the effect have been on yourself and the others?
Sahima Begum
If we had received the letter directly, we would have contacted the police. We would have found out where this first girl had gone, if they gave us that information, and I would have spoken to my sister. I would have said, “Hold on. If she was a close friend of yours, what do you know? How much information can you give?”
Chair
And did any of you know of any circumstances concerning the young girl who had gone to Syria from this school in December? Is it right that none of you knew that she had gone to Syria?
Hussen Abase
Yes.
Chair
You did not know.
Hussen Abase
Not at all.
Sahima Begum
I did not know she had gone to Syria, but in December seven girls were questioned about that. One of the other seven girls—I will call her the fourth girl—lives very close to us. She was being contacted by the police, asked to go into the station and so forth. In her words and her family’s words, they felt like they were being harassed by the police. My mum and the fourth girl’s mum are quite close, so she kept asking my mum, “Hold on, my child’s being questioned about this, that and the other. How come nothing is being said to Shamima?”—my sister. My mum asked me to have a quick word with my sister, to find out if she knew anything, and she said that in that December interview they’d been shown some pictures of the first girl who had gone and they were asked general questions about that. That is the information I got from her. She also told me that the girl had gone abroad, but she did not tell me it was Syria or Turkey; she told me it was Italy.
Chair
So you are telling the Committee that the lack of that information did not prepare you for what might have happened, and indeed getting the letter directly would have prepared you.
Fahmida Aziz
Absolutely.
Chair
One of the issues is the three girls’ passports. Some people have expressed surprise that they had access to them. If you had had this information, could you have held on to the passports? Mr Abase, who normally keeps the passports in your family?
Hussen Abase
Me and my wife.
Chair
So how did your daughter get access to it?
Hussen Abase
I don’t know. She is trustworthy for the family.
Chair
Your view is that she just went and took it. Mr Akunjee, on behalf of the family you have been very critical of the Metropolitan police. You said that they owe the family an apology—is that right?
Tasnime Akunjee
Indeed—yes, I do.
Chair
Why should the police apologise to the family?
Tasnime Akunjee
Well, in particular the handling of the relationship has led to a fairly critical point where the family have come out in the media and explained that, had this letter been given to them directly, as anyone would have expected, they would have been on notice and that issues to do with foreign travel, Syria or maybe radicalisation would have been floating to the fore. The common experience of parents with 15-year-olds is that they do not know very much about what is going on in their 15-year-old’s life, I would imagine. But that would have floated to the fore and maybe they could have addressed it. That was a critical factor. At the height of that tension, a Met press release effectively called the family liars. It suggested that that information specifically was communicated to the family on 9 December—
Chair
About the missing girl.
Tasnime Akunjee
Indeed, and that became rather a sensitive topic. One would have thought that the police, who we pay and train to gather information accurately so that what they say in court can be relied on, would at least be able to find accurate information about what they themselves had given to the family, in sensitive circumstances, particularly in the context of children and counter-terrorism.
Chair
Thank you very much.
Dr Huppert
Going back to the letters, is it possible that the girls’ departure was triggered by being given the letters, or is that unlikely?
Sahima Begum
It could be possible. We don’t know what went through their minds.
Tasnime Akunjee
It is speculative. It is something that we have looked at, and it certainly is a possibility. When schoolgirls are effectively asked to—I quote the colloquial—“rat” on their friends and they are being spoken to by an officer, we do not know if they are aware that the officer is from counter-terrorism or not. The letter is headed “Metropolitan police”. That may have at least raised some panic in them and caused them either to expedite some plans that they were formulating or to formulate a plan thereafter. All of those are certainly possibilities, but within the minds of 15-year-olds we do not know which one they actually picked.
Fahmida Aziz
The police officer who spoke to the girls spoke to them on two separate occasions. One was in December and the other was on 5 February. However, we have heard from community people that there had been several more conversations between the police and the girls on the school premises.
Hussen Abase
I strongly disagree with the letter being given to 15-year-old girls. The word “police” by itself and “terrorism” or “counter-terrorism”, as global issues—it is a heavy burden for a 15-year-old to deal with that. We also feel that we are neglected as parents. We are supposed to know these things. We are the guardians.
Dr Huppert
I understand the concern and how you feel the police let you down. Were letters given to other pupils at all, and were those passed on to the parents?
Tasnime Akunjee
As we understand it, similar letters were only given to seven pupils in total. It was a very small selection of students who had this letter.
Dr Huppert
And were the others passed on to the parents?
Tasnime Akunjee
We have no idea.
Chair
The seven were all associated with the missing girl. Is that right?
Tasnime Akunjee
That is correct.
Mr Winnick
The Police Commissioner, as has already been indicated, will be asked about what has happened and why the letters were not sent to the parents. That will be one of the first questions we put to him. But I wonder if I could ask what you believe led the three young females—I think they were born in this country and educated here—to ISIS, which virtually everyone in Britain believes is a murderous outfit. The beheadings that we know about and the sex slavery are everything that is disgusting and evil. Why should they be attracted to it? Is there any explanation you could give for that?
Fahmida Aziz
Reflecting on it now, given that the first girl who went to Syria in December was a close friend of the three girls, in my view it could be because they just wanted to see their friend or have some form of contact. We don’t know. The fact of the matter is that we really do not know. But given the media, the press and everything that is coming to light, that is what I would think.
Mr Winnick
Is it possible that there was indoctrination outside of school, clearly unknown to the families? As you indicated, if you had known, you would have done your best to dissuade your daughter, cousin or sister.
Hussen Abase
As I know my daughter, it is very difficult to predict why they left this country. That is why we are left in the middle of nowhere. We are really troubled as to why. That is the big question—why the letter was given to them and why they left.
Mr Winnick
Do you feel that other young females could be subject to what has happened and could be encouraged? Is there a possibility that others may take the same route?
Tasnime Akunjee
It is a very difficult thing to understand, and I would hasten to suggest that understanding a 15-year-old girl’s mindset at this time, for people of our age generally, is a difficult thing. Justin Bieber is a difficult thing to understand. In terms of where the argument goes, there are people who have joined the YPJ from this country. They have gone over and want to fight with other organisations out there against ISIS. That is similarly difficult to understand. To put ourselves into the mindset of 15-year-old girls when we do not know what contact they have had with whom or how they have been led along this path—these parents do not know the answer to that question. In the same way that a parent whose child has been taken away—let’s say they fall in love with their teacher and run off to France—does not know how that happened. It is shocking to them.
Hussen Abase
This conversation created a question that never comes through. The letter destructs our daughter, destructs our family and terrorises our children. What we want to know is: apart from this letter, what was the verbal conversation with this child? I know my daughter. She is the kind of girl who, if it is sunset, she will call me to pick her up. How on earth she travelled abroad to join ISIS, is a very difficult question for us to answer—even to predicate. The letter terrified my daughter.
Mr Winnick
We understand what you are going through, as the Chair said. Every one of us understands very well what you must be feeling and suffering at this moment. My last question is: is there anything that a parent in the locality could do to try to find out if their children are being indoctrinated, bearing in mind what has happened in this case? Would you suggest that the parents should be very much on their guard?
Hussen Abase
Yes. As our situation is, we are mentally disabled. We are focusing on our children coming back home, and not in prison because the children are victims.
Sahima Begum
I believe that, as a family, we monitored what she did when she was on her phone. We made sure that she was reading books. My sister enjoyed reading books so she was reading books on there. When she was playing games we would join in and have competitions so, in that sense, we feel that we monitored as much as we could. Obviously, we missed something out because such a big incident has happened but, as far as we knew, we did what we could to keep an eye on our child. In retrospect, if we had been given information about this first girl, we would have thought, “A friend of hers has gone missing. This is a friend of hers. Friends have similar mindsets. Is her mindset similar to that?” We would question that. We were never given the opportunity to question it because, in December, when this girl had gone missing, my family only received a call from the school saying that our sister had been spoken to by the police because a friend had gone missing. The word “missing”, in my mind, means that she is not at home. I do not instantly think that she has gone abroad. I think that she is hopefully still in the country.
Chair
In defence of the school, I have spoken to the head teacher and the school has told me that they were instructed by the police not to tell anybody that the young girl in December had gone to Syria. That was kept in the highest confidence. You were only allowed to know that she was missing. Nobody was allowed to know that she had gone to Syria. That is what the school said.
Fahmida Aziz
But the school failed to inform us that there was a police investigation in school. There were several visits by the police officers in school. The school failed us in that respect. The school also acted as an appropriate adult on behalf of the parents at home. Surely they should have had that discussion with the parents at home.
Chair
That is a very useful point, which we will put to them.
Hussen Abase
Logically, in my view, it does not make sense. If we say, for example, just “missing”, it is not a complete sentence as I understand it. Where? That, as a family, we have to know or we can’t prevent this from happening.
Chair
We are clear as a Committee. You are saying to us that if you had known about the contents of this letter, you might have been able to—you cannot be 100% sure—prevent them from going. That missing letter was critical to you not taking action.
Hussen Abase
Absolutely.
Sahima Begum
It is not just a missing letter, though. You are saying that the school was told that they had to keep it under wraps. My sister was told that she should not discuss outside what she was spoken to about in the interview. Now, you can’t tell a 15-year-old to hold that kind of information away from her family. It is not just my little sister that has said this to me. I have also asked the fourth girl, “Did the police turn around and say to you, ‘Don’t talk to anybody about this case?’” and she confirmed that that is what she was told by the police. Police cannot tell a 15-year-old to keep things away—if you are going to tell a 15-year-old, “Keep that information away from your parents,” or away from anybody, they need to inform the family as well.
Chair
Of course. We understand that.
Hussen Abase
Imagine what kind of picture it draws to tell a 15-year-old girl, “Between me and you”—this burden.
Chair
Yes. We understand that.
Michael Ellis
May I express my condolences for what has happened as far as your family members are concerned? May I ask you first of all, Ms Begum, did I hear you say, in an answer to an earlier question, that earlier in the process you felt that your sister felt that she was being harassed by the police?
Sahima Begum
No, not my sister. Seven girls were interviewed. There was a fourth girl, who my family have contact with. The fourth girl felt like she was being harassed by the police, because she actually wasn’t friends with the first girl who left.
Michael Ellis
But this is somebody in the orbit of your sister, was it? This is a friend or an acquaintance of your sister?
Sahima Begum
An acquaintance of my sister, but one of the seven girls that were interviewed in December.
Michael Ellis
Do you yourself think that the relationship, prior to your sister going missing and the other family members going missing—was an unhappy relationship as far as the police are concerned, that there was an untrusting relationship or an unsatisfactory relationship as far as the police are concerned?
Sahima Begum
Yes.
Michael Ellis
Mr Akunjee, you have been quite critical of the police as far as their conduct is concerned. What I am just trying to establish is, there are those that might say that the police can’t really win. They are sometimes criticised by some people—I am not saying everyone—that their presence is intrusive in some communities, but then you, as solicitor, have been critical of the police in that they haven’t done enough, or that they have misconducted themselves, in this case. So what would you say to those that might argue that, really, the police can’t win?
Tasnime Akunjee
No. I have been critical where I believe that criticism is appropriate. All the police had to do was use an envelope, and we might have avoided all of this. So that is my criticism there. On top of that, my criticism is also that where the families have come out and set out their stall—effectively given their evidence, as they are doing today, in front of the media—the police made a mistake: we will call it a mistake, but it is a mistake, in that they alleged that between them and the schools, the family had been informed, effectively calling the family liars. In the media.
Michael Ellis
But you have also said that it is unrealistic to expect family members to necessarily understand—I am sure many people would sympathise with this—what is going through the mind of a 15-year-old. I think that is what you said.
Tasnime Akunjee
Indeed.
Michael Ellis
But isn’t it also, in that case, even more unrealistic to expect the police to understand what is going through the minds of 15-year-olds?
Tasnime Akunjee
Given that they are tasked with the resources and the powers to investigate crime, and particularly terrorism, they were on notice with the first girl in December having gone to the location. These families were further disadvantaged in terms of understanding their children because the police had put a cap on the information to be given to them both through the school and through the children themselves, by effectively telling them to hush up. So how are the families supposed to work out what is going on in their children’s lives when they are not being involved in any process to do with the school or with the police, and they are also, similarly, being specifically excluded from the danger factors around their children? That is the criticism.
Michael Ellis
The Commissioner will speak for himself—we will hear from him shortly—but is it not possible to argue that the police want to do all they can to disincentivise others from following those who have gone before, and therefore it is not in the public interest, or in the interests of anyone else, necessarily to give all the information that the police are aware of? It is quite routine in police practice to withhold some information.
Tasnime Akunjee
Indeed, but you have heard from the family already that the first thing they did when they saw the letter was call the number on the letter. Had they seen the letter, they would have been on notice. The police themselves clearly were aware that that minimum information should have been delivered to the families, because they attempted to do so, albeit in a somewhat bizarre manner through the actual girls. Given that the police knew that they had to communicate at least that minimum information, they failed to do so.
Hussen Abase
I just want to put a question to you, if I may. If the police are not expected to understand the mind of a young girl of 15, I will say okay, for the sake of argument. But do you think it is appropriate to give them the letter, neglecting the family? Where are we? Where is our position as parents?
Chair
We get that point. We understand.
Michael Ellis
The passports were within your possession and control at home, and your daughter knew where they were. So you are assuming that your daughter took the passport without your knowledge. Is that right?
Hussen Abase
Yes, of course. She is trustworthy. She is free.
Michael Ellis
Of course. Do any of the family members know how it is that the flights were paid for? I understand that these three flights would have cost in excess of £1,000, or certainly many hundreds of pounds. Do we know where the money was obtained by two 15-year-olds and a 16-year-old? Ms Begum, do you have any idea?
Sahima Begum
No. I know for a fact that my sister did not have access to that kind of money.
Michael Ellis
Ms Aziz, do you have any knowledge?
Fahmida Aziz
We don’t know how they accessed funds.
Michael Ellis
Were there any indicators that the girls were perhaps becoming more devout in their thinking, or that they had changed their general conduct? Had you noticed any differences in their behaviour in the weeks and months prior to this happening?
Hussen Abase
No. It was the same as before.
Fahmida Aziz
No. If we had noticed anything, I think we would have been pretty effective in stepping in and querying, but we had not.
Michael Ellis
Just one other question, if I may. As far as the internet and social media are concerned, do you think that they had a part to play in this? Were any of your family members heavy users of social media? Is it within your knowledge or belief that that may have had a part to play? Do you think there is room for more regulation in this area?
Tasnime Akunjee
I think it is the Government that is encouraging the uptake of hyperspeed broadband. What would you like?
Michael Ellis
Mr Akunjee, if you will just bear with me, I am asking the family members: did you notice whether there had been heavy use of social media by your family members beforehand? Do you think it is anything to do with that? Do you think that could have had a part to play?
Sahima Begum
indicated dissent.
Hussen Abase
I have no clue. I am not from that area. I do not use technology that much.
Chair
It has come into the public domain that one of the girls was a heavy user of Twitter and was following 70 extremists on Twitter, which presumably came as a complete and total surprise and shock to all of you. I would not know who my 17-year-old daughter follows on Twitter. It is just not something parents would do, presumably. You wouldn’t have known this.
Sahima Begum
indicated dissent.
Chair
Can I ask you about the future and your message to other parents, before we come to the end of this session? Do you know about the Government’s Prevent strategy? Do any of you have any idea what this strategy is? Have you ever heard of it, and do you know anything about it?
Sahima Begum
I personally had not heard about it until, obviously, the situation that has now come up. Now we know about it. I understand that risk assessments by Prevent—Prevent ask for risk assessments or something—need to be done on certain situations. I assume that when the first girl went off, the seven who were being interviewed should have had risk assessments done on them. That wasn’t done then, but I do now have the school knocking on the door asking to have a risk assessment done on my other sister, who happens to be attending the same school. I just feel that if those protocols were put in place at the right time, we would have known more information.
Fahmida Aziz
Your younger sister and Mr Abase’s youngest daughter are both in the same school and, even given that all this has happened, they are still waiting for the risk assessment to take place, which should have been instant.
Chair
It should have been instant. Where would members of community go—we talk a lot about the community and what the community can do to help—if they had concerns about their daughter or their son being radicalised? Who would you go to in those circumstances? You wouldn’t go to the police necessarily, would you? Is there someone you could turn to to talk about these issues?
Fahmida Aziz
The school. We would like to be in a position to approach the school in circumstances like this.
Chair
And that would be the best for members of the community? There is a line called the anti-terrorism hotline, but very few parents would pick up the phone and ring up the anti-terrorism hotline if they had concerns about the radicalisation of their children. There needs to be somewhere else for them to go to, and you are saying that it should be the school. Is that right?
Hussen Abase
As for me, I don’t know the symptoms even—what radicalisation is.
Chair
Sure, because it has never come before you. In respect of the Turkish authorities and what happened in Turkey, once you knew that that your daughters had gone to Turkey—once you had been told this—was your expectation that they would have been followed out there by the relevant authorities, be it the police or someone else? We have seen the CCTV footage; they were obviously in Turkey in that bus station for a considerable period of time before they crossed the border on Friday. I am talking about the gap between Wednesday and Friday. What is your expectation? What would you have wanted to see happen in those 48 hours?
Sahima Begum
We were told that there were police on the ground in Turkey looking for them—this is information that we were given by the Met police. Obviously, we were concerned. We’d been told that our kids had gone off to Turkey. We were constantly asking, “Do you have people there looking for them?” We kept being told, “Yes, we do. Yes, we do.” When the footage came out of the bus station, we were thinking, “Hold on. We reported it straight away. We were told that pictures of all three girls were being distributed in Turkey and everybody knows about it now.” But if that was the case, they would have been seen by somebody, because they were there for a considerable amount of time. Obviously, that message hadn’t been passed on. In this whole situation that we have come through, messages aren’t getting passed on. Somewhere along the line, someone is missing something out.
Chair
The Turkish authorities are very clear—we will hear from the ambassador shortly—that they were not notified until Friday, and therefore they couldn’t activate their various investigation systems. Is that what you have been told?
Hussen Abase
No. Who fills that gap? We, the same day, report. The Turkish say Friday, but we report the same day. That gap—blank.
Chair
Mr Akunjee, an apology from the Metropolitan police—that is what you seek?
Tasnime Akunjee
Yes. I was hoping that relations can be built, and relations can be built after they have broken down only after an apology, I would have thought.
Chair
Secondly, in terms of the liaison officer, in view of what has been said about the Prevent strategy, is that someone who can work with your clients and the community, or would you like to see someone new and more senior in there who is able to deal with this issue, which has obviously been all over the world? It is not something just in London; everyone in the world knows about these three girls.
Tasnime Akunjee
It is abhorrent behaviour in the extreme for a police officer who is not legally qualified to advise an individual not to follow their lawyer’s advice. I would say that that officer needs to revisit his training.
Chair
Miss Aziz, you obviously want your cousin back as quickly as possible.
Fahmida Aziz
Of course, yes.
Chair
What would be your message—each of you—to other parents and other relatives in the same situation as yourselves? What would be your message today to them?
Fahmida Aziz
To other parents? To other people? It is very difficult. I am a parent myself—I have got two young kids. As a parent, I think it is crucial to have communication with the school and I think it does boil down to us. We need to maintain a certain level of communication with the school, but it has got to be a two-way street. If the school do not initiate it, of course we have to initiate it. In respect of our sister, my cousin, for her safety, we want her to come back. We want her to be safe. We are hoping that she is safe wherever she may be. The ultimate thing is that we need to still rely on services who can help us deal with this and bring them back safely.
Chair
Miss Begum, what would be your message to parents and members of families in similar positions? They must be very anxious, especially the parents at that school. It is a big school, is it not? There are lots of young girls there.
Sahima Begum
It is a big school. It is a very respectable school. Both my sisters have gone there and we have never had any complaints about the school. It is an amazing school. It is high achieving. They get all the support they need in terms of bringing them up to the potential that they have. I feel so let down by the police because we gave them everything, every step of the way. We gave them all information and they were just feeding back information that we had given them. My liaison officer was the liaison officer that handed them the letter. I think it is completely ridiculous that they assigned him to the same case because ethically I don’t think it is right. That question kept coming up—why did you hand the letters to the girls? His response was that they did not have contact details. The school were very helpful. I went to the school to take my sister to school, because she has to carry on. I asked the school whether they provided contact details. They said yes, on the day we provided contact details.
Tasnime Akunjee
Sorry, just to be clear, that was in December.
Sahima Begum
This was in December. The school handed them the contact details. I believed the school. The liaison officer kept turning round and saying paperwork was being pushed around. I don’t like the idea of my mother’s address being pushed around from here to there.
Chair
Mr Abase, if you had a message to give to other parents like yourself in the community, what would it be, following the awful circumstances that you have had to put up with over the last week?
Hussen Abase
Simply, I would say, be vigilant not to fall into the same trap as we fell into.
Chair
Mr Akunjee, finally, with you. You have given two of the things that you want—an apology from the police and a new liaison officer. Is there anything else that could help the families and that could point us to the way in which the Prevent strategy could work in the future?
Tasnime Akunjee
Sure. In terms of safety of children, last year under schedule 7, we managed to stop for no reason at all 60,000 people and ask them questions, but this year we have three 15-year-old girls who somehow should have been stopped but managed to get on a plane and go abroad. I think that is a key issue and that is just about pure safety for children, not just within the terrorism context. In terms of the future, I think my experience of the Prevent strategy is that none of these girls, none of the seven, appeared on any sort of high-level—
Chair
List.
Tasnime Akunjee
List, yes, within the Prevent criteria. It is my view that it is a defunct document. It is also self-contradictory in places. I would suggest that new partners in Government are sought to get a clear read of what the situation on the ground is. Frankly, some of the organisations that are feeding into Prevent are simply feeding in information that is reflective of nightmares.
Chair
Do you think more should have been done to get them back once they were in Turkey? Do you feel that the efforts were not muscular enough?
Tasnime Akunjee
I think the problem is how we look at these kids and these families. It appears that they simply were not taken seriously or looked at seriously. There was no real effort behind the communication structures. I have worked in cases, in the terrorism context, where a person has got on a plane, on a flight to Turkey; the family has then called the police in the same way that this family did, and there is a response team waiting on Turkey’s side, deflecting them back—that is within two hours. That is capable and proved from previous experience and cases in a similar context. That simply did not happen here and the idea that police are saying, “We told them 24 hours later,” and Turkey is saying three days—24 hours is an unacceptable period of time.
Chair
Thank you.
Paul Flynn
How do you expect the police to have advance knowledge that these girls had been radicalised when their families did not see anything?
Tasnime Akunjee
That would be because the first girl was known to the police to have gone over to Syria. The police knew this in December and they were already speaking to these other girls and then giving letters to them, asking them to be questioned formally by their parents. So they were clearly within the nexus of interest on these issues. The minute they disappeared, surely the police would have thought, “Oh! Here we go. The December girl has gone off to Syria, we know this,”—the police—
Chair
What you are saying is that there was no connection made.
Paul Flynn
How did the police get the information that they had disappeared? How quickly after they went did the police realise they had disappeared?
Chair
I think we have had evidence of that; it was Tuesday.
Tim Loughton
Isn’t there also a role at the airport here? I remember that a couple of years ago, my daughter, who was then 16, was returning from Portugal and she was detained on the other side—arriving at Gatwick airport—and I received a phone call, which was slightly embarrassing because at the time I was the Minister for Children, before they would release her to me. That was absolutely right, but surely there should be some reciprocal questions asked at the check-in when you have got three children, unaccompanied, going on a plane. Questions could have been asked: “Why are you, unaccompanied, getting on a plane. Is there something more to it than that?” Do you think some more checks could have been made by the airline?
Tasnime Akunjee
Sorry—is that on the Turkey side?
Tim Loughton
No, no—when they checked in at the airport here.
Tasnime Akunjee
In terms of check-in, I am sure that we have all had that experience of putting your passport through and having a computer read your face. And one of the girls was actually using someone else’s passport. How she got through that is a failure in the actual software, or the computer mechanism, there; it was not even the same passport.
Tim Loughton
There is the passport check-in, and now of course you can do it electronically in many cases, but when you have face-to-face contact, which I presume they did, with the Turkish Airlines desk, and when the member of staff working there checked their details and saw that they were three unaccompanied children, should there not automatically have been questions asked as to why three 15 and 16-year-olds are travelling unaccompanied, and what the purpose of their visit is?
Tasnime Akunjee
I absolutely agree with that, but in my experience of airports, I think the staff there are under a fair bit of pressure, given the amount of volume that goes, and their main questions are, “Does your luggage fit the actual standard size?” That is really more their focus; they are looking downwards and not upwards.
Chair
But you agree with Mr Loughton that there should have been better checks?
Tasnime Akunjee
Absolutely. When it comes to the safety of children, it should be our primary concern.
Nicola Blackwood
Mr Akunjee, you said that you had been involved in cases before where there was a very quick response when a child or an unaccompanied minor had gone abroad—
Tasnime Akunjee
It was not a child or a minor; it was a young adult.
Nicola Blackwood
In what context was that case? Was it a missing child? Was it an abduction case?
Tasnime Akunjee
It was a terrorism case.
Nicola Blackwood
So there have been cases where the system has worked. What do you think was different about this case? Why do you think the system didn’t work this time?
Tasnime Akunjee
I have been critical in this particular case because there is just no communication across the board, either with the families or with those agencies in the airports, where they should make checks and communicate information about small children boarding planes, or indeed the police and the communications, or lack of, through the post.
Nicola Blackwood
And did the case that you were involved with before involve Turkey itself?
Tasnime Akunjee
It did, yes.
Nicola Blackwood
Mr Abase, I was very worried when I heard you say that even now you wouldn’t know what symptoms of radicalisation to look for, and I just wanted to ask all of you this: do you feel that enough is being done to make parents aware of what the indicators of radicalisation are, so that if they see these things, first, the alert can go up and they can say, “Okay, there’s a problem here,” and, secondly, they would know where to go to or what to do?
Chair
Mr Abase? Do you agree with Nicola Blackwood?
Nicola Blackwood
Do you think there is enough being done to make sure that people are aware of the indicators? There is enough being done or there isn’t?
Hussen Abase
No, there isn’t.
Sahima Begum
I have the same view; I don’t think enough is being done. If parents were more aware of things to look out for, then maybe parents would keep an extra eye on their kids.
Nicola Blackwood
Where do you think the best route is for that to come from? From schools, or community groups, or the police? Where is the most trusted group?
Sahima Begum
I think schools would be the most trusted group, because we trust them enough to send our kids there.
Nicola Blackwood
Do you agree, Miss Aziz?
Fahmida Aziz
I agree. Children are obviously spending the best part of their day in school. As far as I am aware—I have two children going into two different schools—following our situation Tower Hamlets are now delivering certain workshops and things like that in the borough. So we can be hopeful that things will improve for other families.
Nicola Blackwood
So schools need to have a clearer line of responsibility in preventing terrorism?
Fahmida Aziz
Absolutely.
Nicola Blackwood
And they also need to know more clearly what their role is in terms of parental consent when police are involved in counter-terrorism activities.
Chair
Miss Aziz, Miss Begum, Mr Abase and Mr Akunjee, thank you very much for coming here. You are welcome to stay for the rest of the session, when we will have the Commissioner and the Turkish ambassador.
Witnesses
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, Metropolitan Police Commissioner, and Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, `Metropolitan Police, gave evidence.
Chair
Commissioner and Mr Rowley, thank you very much. I am sorry, we are running a tiny bit late. Commissioner, this is one of your—I was going to say normal—visits to the Select Committee when we examine you from time to time on various issues. Mr Rowley is here for the first part of the evidence session, which will deal with counter-terrorism, and we will then go on to other issues such as Yewtree. We have just heard what can only be described as damning evidence from the families of the three girls who have gone to Syria, with severe criticisms of the way in which the Metropolitan police have acted. There was a failure to communicate with the families and a failure to hand letters to families which might have alerted them to the fact that the girls might go to Syria. We heard evidence that a liaison officer tried to get the families not to listen to the advice of a solicitor. At a time when the Metropolitan police need to be reaching out to communities, here was a big opportunity to show the Muslim community in particular that they were on their side. They were trying to stop this radicalisation and try to discover where these girls had gone. At the start, do you want to take the opportunity to say anything on behalf of the police about how the case has been dealt with? The family want an apology, because they think things could have been handled much better. What would you like to say about that, Commissioner?
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe
First of all, we are sorry if the family feel like that. Clearly it is a terrible situation they find themselves in, having lost their daughters in such a horrible way. You can only half imagine what a parent is going through at this time. In that sense, I am sorry that they are in that situation. I am also sorry that the letter we intended to get to them did not get through, because clearly that failed. It was intended for them, it failed, and for that of course we are sorry. I do not think we would go as far as saying, “Therefore, that caused the girls to go.” I don’t think there was anything more we could have done to prevent that, because at the beginning we were trying to get information from these girls about a further young woman who had left in December. That was the principal reason for us talking to that family. With hindsight, obviously we now know that these girls were planning to go. And neither the family, the police, the school, nor anyone else realised that. That is the sequence of events, but the circumstances the parents find themselves in is a terrible situation and they must be worried sick about how their girls are.
Chair
They are, and thank you very much for that apology. I think that will go a long way to helping restore trust. Nobody is suggesting that, if the parents got the letter in December, somehow we would not be sitting here today talking about these three girls. The issue for the parents and the families is that, if they had the letter, they would have been alerted to the possibility that something might have happened to them. I spoke to the school earlier today, and they were very clear that they were under instructions from the Metropolitan police not to tell anyone in the school that the girl who went in December had gone to Syria. As a parent myself, if my child’s school informed me of that, I can just imagine the likely reaction in my household as to how to look after, watch and be very vigilant concerning my child. I am sure that would apply to any parent. Do you accept that the core failure to communicate that letter, which is what the family said was absolutely crucial, is something that really does need to be revisited? When you have situations of this kind in future—the past is the past, and we are thinking about the future—it is vital that everyone involved, schools and parents, knows what is happening. It cannot necessarily be kept in the shadows. Tell them the unvarnished truth and they can prepare.
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe
As you have mentioned, with the benefit of hindsight we are going back to review what happened in this case. The dilemma is often, first, how much privacy the individual expects. Of course, their family may not wish for that information about a girl going to Syria to be shared, and in these three families’ cases they haven’t even had that opportunity—it has been in the public glare for obvious reasons. We always have to think about that. It is privacy for the individual involved, and then you have to get the balance right between warning people and not worrying them. Together with the school, I am sure we will sit down and work through whether we could have dealt with it better in either keeping the young people at that college informed or, alternatively, keeping the families informed. I don’t know whether Mark wants to say anything more about the letter.
Mark Rowley
Thinking about the context, this is a sizeable investigation that continues. Obviously, it started with the first girl who went in December and then has the parallel case of the three girls who have gone more recently. Massive amounts of CCTV have been recovered, and there have been massive amounts of work on financial data and communications data. In that context, one line of inquiry was speaking to that first girl’s friendship group. They were spoken to in December, and subsequently one girl came forward with some helpful information. She was seen, a statement was taken and some useful material was gathered. That investigation has moved on apace. In fact, we have arrested two people for child abduction in relation to that first girl, and the case of the Scottish woman who has been reported overseas is well advanced. Work is going on potentially to prosecute her if she ever returns. All those strands of work are very productive, and one line of inquiry was the wider friendship group. Out of that came the contacts with the girls repeatedly, and the officer who followed up in February was, I think, doing a belt and braces job. They had given very little in the first meeting in December, and he was determined to follow it up and go through a full interview with each of them. He met them, and the letter going to their parents simply said, “I would like to have a longer conversation with your daughters.” Could it have been delivered in a better way? Of course it could have been, but I think it was a very simple intention as part of a massive investigation.
Chair
Mr Rowley, it’s not just that, is it? I am not trained, and you are the nation’s lead on counter-terrorism. Just with common sense, if I was dealing with a school where somebody had gone to Syria and she was part of a friendship group, I would want to tell the parents of the others almost immediately. I would want to bring them into my confidence. I would want to explain what might happen so that, at the very least, they could take away the passports, which were subsequently used for these girls to travel. I wouldn’t just use it as an ordinary investigation. This is a huge propaganda coup for ISIL and a big blow to the credibility of what this Committee has said in the past is the best police service in the world. It needed that letter to go to the parents and for the parents to be told that this was a situation. The letter should not have been handed to a 15-year-old girl.
Mark Rowley
It is a very simple line of inquiry in an investigation, and I don’t see, as you do now with hindsight, that it was obvious that these girls were going to go missing. If parents can’t see changes in behaviour that involve stealing from parents, changing appearance and taking hold of a sister’s passport, if people in the community don’t spot this and if we don’t see signs of it in schools, I think it is very hard to expect police doing an investigation to spot these signs.
Chair
Of course, but you have partners in this, and one of the partners is the school. The school was instructed not to tell anyone. Indeed, when I spoke to the school earlier today, they went through the seven levels of Prevent, which are the seven issues that need to be looked at to see whether there is an issue on Prevent for a particular child—the at-risk issues. They found that only in respect of one of the girls did one of those issues apply. Where are your partners in this if it happens again?
Mark Rowley
I am not sure I follow the question. The school have looked at it and themselves found it difficult to see any signs of radicalisation with these girls.
Chair
But the school was told not to inform anyone that this child had gone to Syria. There is a difference between radicalisation and someone actually getting on a plane and going to Turkey to join ISIL. There is a big difference between radicalisation and someone taking those steps, is there not? Or am I just wrong?
Mark Rowley
No, absolutely. Clearly, the first girl has made a dramatic decision and has travelled off to Syria to join ISIS. That is very worrying and concerning. I do not believe that there was any intent to keep it secret—far from it—but there is the balance in terms of privacy, as the Commissioner has outlined. The fundamental focus has been about hunting down and trying to find that first girl, because we are worried about her safety. She has gone to a war zone. That is our biggest concern. All those lines of inquiry have been very fruitful. They have delivered arrests and intelligence. As one of those lines of inquiry, we spoke to her friendship group. If someone in the school had said, “There is something strange going on here,” of course it would have generated more actions, but to expect the police during an investigation to have a lens on these issues that families, schools and the community do not have is unrealistic.
Chair
If we look at the three girls, when you were notified on the Tuesday that they had gone missing, did alarm bells ring that these three girls were all part of the group of seven that had been interviewed last December? Did someone notice, and think, “My goodness, there could be a problem here—they could have gone to Turkey”?
Mark Rowley
That was picked up very quickly. In terms of the sequence of events, broadly, the three girls left their families having deceived them about what they were doing that day. They get flights at lunchtime, reaching Turkey by late afternoon. Two of the families realise that something is amiss that evening, when the girls are already on the ground in Turkey. One family came to us the next morning. We of course were looking at these missing people, doing record research—
Chair
This is the 17th—the Tuesday?
Mark Rowley
Yes, Tuesday evening and then Wednesday morning. That research involves looking at all sorts of data and information out there, including obviously the pattern with the previous girl. With the flight manifest we find evidence that they have flown out of the country, albeit one—
Chair
Did you discover who paid for the tickets?
Mark Rowley
Yes, we have information about how the tickets were bought. They were bought for a large amount of cash at a local travel agent.
Chair
And you know the travel agent?
Mark Rowley
We know the travel agent. We worked our way through that, and by the mid-afternoon—I think it is about 3 o’clock or 4 o’clock—on the Wednesday we are looking to kick off inquiries in Turkey, and we make contact through the liaison officer situated in the Turkish embassy here in London and also speak to the British consulate in Istanbul. So we try to kick those inquiries off very quickly.
Chair
Sure, but why did no one then go out there to see whether they could find these girls? These are three young British citizens who have got on a plane and gone abroad, and you contact the liaison officer in London.
Mark Rowley
We had an officer on the ground the day after that.
Chair
So you sent someone out?
Mark Rowley
I have a small network of officers based in critical countries around the world doing counter-terrorism work and we had one—we are increasing that office—based in Turkey. As it happened, it was his leave period, so he cancelled his annual leave and rushed back to Turkey, and was there a day or so after we reported it.
Chair
On which day?
Mark Rowley
I cannot remember whether it was the day after or two days after.
Chair
While reassuring the parents and the rest of the public, you saw images of these girls go into that bus station in Turkey. They weren’t in a hurry—they walked in very casually, sat down and waited a considerable length of time. I understand you only had that footage afterwards, but bearing in mind the fact that you had three young British citizens who were the centre of all this attention from a school that had a pupil who had gone to Syria, did you not feel that more could have been done by your officer in Istanbul to try to track the three girls into that bus station? It appears that that is a well worn route for people who want to go from the United Kingdom to Syria.
Mark Rowley
He has done an enormous amount of work with the Turkish police. The Turkish police have committed a really significant amount of resource on this investigation and have been working very hard. I am briefed on some very substantial progress they have made in relation to the investigation, which is very encouraging. His relationship with them as a British police officer there is very strong. Of course, his role is to work with them, to assist and ask for their help. He can’t go on the ground and do surveillance and investigate—that is not lawful.
Chair
He has to work with the Turks?
Mark Rowley
Yes.
Chair
But looking at that footage, as I did and the public did, did you not think, as the top counter-terrorism officer in the country, “We nearly stopped them going and we could have done something else to make sure they didn’t go?” They were sitting in that Turkish bus station for so long. The parents were obviously very upset. You had a number of officers involved, you actually could have prevented them getting to Syria.
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe
I’m not sure that that’s reasonable. As Mark has indicated, when we operate in a foreign country, we do not operate on the ground any more than we would expect the Turks to come and try to find someone missing from Ankara in London. It wouldn’t be appropriate. They do not have the powers, nor do we in Turkey. What we do have is a duty to share the information as quickly as possible and to try and encourage them, among their many priorities, in a huge country, to consider this a priority. Our best advice is that they took some urgent action. Of course, they would be no clearer, presumably, about where these girls went after leaving the airport, without making significant inquiries, such as looking through CCTV. Everybody says that is very straightforward until they have gone through some 200 hours of CCTV to find these people. It takes time. So I would not judge the fact that they weren’t discovered early. Of course, we would all have hoped to have discovered them before they travelled to Syria, but it is a big country. These were three people they were looking for on behalf of the British state and I’m sure they also have many priorities. I think, from our assessment, that they have done an awful lot. Sadly, it wasn’t effective.
Chair
Are there lessons to be learned in terms of co-operation with Turkey? They are a friendly country and we do a lot of work with them. The Turks are under huge pressure—there are foreign fighters coming from western Europe on one border, and on the other border there are refugees coming from Iraq and Syria. Can we do more to help the Turkish Government?
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe
We could always say that we could do more.
Chair
What more, practically, would you like to see happen?
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe
It is not easy to articulate. You have set out very clearly the context in which they operate. They have a border with a warring state. They are trying to control that border. There are issues on that border, as you know, with the Kurdish population, which doesn’t make it very straightforward for them, and, of course, they are trying to manage a huge population of which this is just part of their threat. I have to say that, generally, we have a good, professional relationship with them as police officers and as a security service. We do a lot to work together and, as you say, our primary aim has been to prevent terrorism. We are trying to stop people—generally young men, but not only young men—leaving to become terrorists in Syria or Iraq. That has been our principle aim. With this latest surge of young girls and women going, I think we have to have an open mind about the purpose of them leaving. Is it for terrorism, or is it because they are victims?
Chair
How big is the surge? The figure has been put at 50 young women and girls who have gone there.
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe
I think it is 22 in the past 12 months.
Chair
Twenty-two in the past 12 months. I see. And these are the only parents who have come out in this way, so publicly, about the loss of their child? Is that right?
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe
I believe so. As far as I am aware.
Mark Rowley
We have had good co-operation from communities. One of the increasing trends of the past year, which is very welcome, is community leaders from Muslim communities stepping forward and trying to confront the evil propaganda that is coming across from ISIS. We have had 87 missing people reported to us by families. Those families have come forward and engaged with the police because they trust us.
Chair
Just how do they report them? They don’t ring the anti-terrorist line, do they? How do they do it?
Mark Rowley
It ranges from the anti-terrorist line to local police calls coming through normal routes. Then it is down to local officers.
Chair
Eighty-seven?
Mark Rowley
Eighty-seven families have come forward. Twenty-six of those are in relation to women. Sixty-one of the 87 were young people under 21.
Chair
Is this trend of British citizens going to become foreign fighters increasing or decreasing?
Mark Rowley
It has been a pretty steady flow. The numbers of girls within it has tended to be one or two a month and every now and again it leaps up to be a handful and goes back down again. It is a fairly steady picture, but it is very concerning. They are all tragedies, potentially.
Michael Ellis
Commissioner, do you feel sometimes that the police can’t win? From some quarters the police are accused of being too intrusive and now it seems that in other quarters the police are supposed to know when young people are being radicalised when family members perhaps don’t know that? Do you think that sometimes the police can’t win?
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe
I think that it is the nature of our role. Sometimes it is quite difficult to get that balance right. It is quite difficult here for a couple of reasons. One is that all of us—the Government and perhaps Parliament—are challenged by the complexity of this ISIS attraction for both terrorists and young women. It is pretty hard to understand why they are attracted to it, and therefore it is rather hard to have strategies to intervene in it. If you just look at London, this is a big city. There are 1.25 million Muslims living in this great city, and spotting the ones who are interested in travelling abroad in these horrible circumstances is hard. We then have to intervene. We have done an awful lot of work with people who we believe are at risk of being radicalised. Hundreds of people have been put into the Channel programme, and it has had some success. But the scale is big. We know that at least 600 or 700 people have already gone to Syria; that is a minimum, not a maximum. Those are the ones we know about by now. It is a real challenge. I do not think that any of us can underestimate that in complexity or size. We are doing our best, but only by working with schools, parents and others will we make a real, lasting intervention. The police are the last resort when it comes to the law.
Michael Ellis
Talking about working with schools and parents, do you think that the police went a bit wrong with the letter that was apparently written to the girls instead of the parents? Was the letter addressed to the parents and given to the girls to pass on, or was it actually addressed to the girls?
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe
I’m afraid I don’t know.
Mark Rowley
It was expected to be given to the parents.
Michael Ellis
So was it addressed to the parents or the girls?
Mark Rowley
I cannot remember how it was headed, but it was expected to be given to the parents.
Michael Ellis
And were the children that it was given to—it was given to more than just these three girls—told to hand it to their parents?
Mark Rowley
Yes. There were seven girls who the school identified as being the friendship group of the first girl who went in December. It was that wider friendship group whom we met in early December and then had the follow-up meeting with in early February.
Q274Michael Ellis
Presumably, the letter could have been sent in the post. I accept that that would have slowed it down by a couple of days, but it might have guaranteed its arrival at the parents’ addresses.
Mark Rowley
As the commissioner said, in hindsight that would have been better. Of course, after the first meeting, the deputy head spoke to the parents and said that there had been a meeting with the police. So there was some expectation that the children would pass it on, but they did not.
Michael Ellis
And what about this money? You say that you have found the travel agent and that they accepted a large sum of money in cash. How much was it?
Mark Rowley
It was well over £1,000.
Michael Ellis
Over £1,000 in cash was handed over by three teenage girls. Do we know how the girls got that money?
Mark Rowley
We think it is linked to theft from families—taking jewellery from one of the families.
Chair
Taking jewellery from their families—is that what you are saying?
Mark Rowley
Yes.
Michael Ellis
I see. We work quite closely with the Turkish authorities, I presume, and they have substantial challenges of their own, as we do in this country. Are you happy that, generally speaking, relations between the police in London and Ankara are satisfactory and work well?
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe
Yes, certainly. At the moment, it works well. From time to time, there will always be tensions—usually between priorities. Everyone always has too much to do, but generally it seems to work pretty well. Our inquiries to them about people arriving for terrorism, which more recently are the missing girls, seem to have been tracked seriously. But it is quite a challenge for them in terms of volume. We are just the UK, but we have seen hundreds and thousands of people around Europe travelling through Turkey, so it is quite a challenge for them to deal with many countries making similar requests.
Q279Michael Ellis
And that is accepted. As far as the sequence of the girls’ departure is concerned, if I understand the evidence that you have given correctly, two of the girls were reported missing on 17 February, which was a Tuesday. We now know that they caught a flight at lunchtime on that day. Is that right?
Mark Rowley
Yes.
Michael Ellis
All three of the girls?
Mark Rowley
Yes.
Michael Ellis
But at the time that the flight departed, one of the girls had not been reported missing.
Mark Rowley
None of them were reported missing at—
Michael Ellis
None of them were reported missing at the time the flight departed?
Mark Rowley
Correct.
Michael Ellis
But two of the girls were reported missing later that same day?
Mark Rowley
That evening, yes.
Michael Ellis
And the flight was at lunchtime?
Mark Rowley
Yes.
Michael Ellis
The third girl was reported missing the following day, is that right?
Mark Rowley
The following morning, that’s right.
Michael Ellis
The following morning. The police notified the Turkish authorities on that following morning, the Wednesday morning—
Mark Rowley
In the afternoon.
Michael Ellis
The afternoon. How were the Turkish authorities notified? Were they notified via the embassy in London?
Mark Rowley
We used two routes. We spoke to the British consulate in Istanbul, but the main direction was—in the same way as we have police officers in liaison posts around the world, the Turks do—the police officer in a liaison post in their embassy. We went through him.
Michael Ellis
That is a normal protocol, is it?
Mark Rowley
If our overseas liaison officer had not been on a short break with his family, it would have gone through that route, but it is perfectly proper to go through this route. We asked the liaison if he would take the inquiry and pass it on to his colleagues back home in Turkey. He was more than happy to do so.
Michael Ellis
That was done on the Wednesday—
Mark Rowley
Afternoon, yes.
Michael Ellis
Afternoon. When you say you passed information to the Turkish authorities and, for that matter, the British consul in Istanbul, did you include descriptions of the girls, perhaps photographs of them and particulars of what had occurred?
Mark Rowley
Yes. Certainly all their personal details, because of course we want the authorities to check any manifest for any travel within the country. Turkey has a registration system in terms of hotels and that sort of bookings, so we wanted them to check against those things—
Michael Ellis
And did it include photographs?
Mark Rowley
I think it included photographs as well. I will have to double-check that, but I am pretty sure it did.
Michael Ellis
Are you satisfied that the normal protocols were followed in terms of notifying the relevant authorities, British and Turkish, in respect of these three girls?
Mark Rowley
Yes. And, as I say, the Turks have been very helpful.
Chair
We are all praising the Turks.
Q293Mr Winnick
We will obviously ask the Turkish ambassador about what happened or did not happen in Turkey and, moreover, about the Turkish airlines in so far as he has any responsibility—he probably hasn’t—but I take it, first of all, that the first lesson from all this unfortunate event is that parents in future, from now, will be notified directly. The letters will not be handed over to the pupils.
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe
Yes, of course. That is one of the things that we learned. In similar circumstances—although each is different—we take the Chair’s first point. How do we notify other people in the school? Secondly, how do we notify those closest to the girls? We are reviewing how we will do that in future. We will have to work with schools to see how best to do it.
Mr Winnick
Indeed. I think there is a general recognition that what happened was a mistake. If I may widen the questioning for a moment, the Prevent programme is intended to prevent people from being radicalised and doing what these three did—going to the notorious outfit ISIS, which we know is founded on terrorism and every other evil that one can imagine. As you know, Commissioner, in the past few days a former police commander has been reported as saying that “the lack of Muslim staff in the ranks of the Prevent scheme is hampering efforts to stop vulnerable young people, particularly women, from travelling to Syria to join Islamic State” or ISIS. Is there any justification in that criticism?
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe
To some extent, yes. We have about 50,000 people, with 32,000 police officers, of whom about 11% are from minorities. We have over 300 Muslim officers. So it is a relatively small percentage, given that in London, as we have already said, there are 1.25 million Muslims out of a population of 8.6 million. Obviously, the number of Muslim officers is then smaller by the time we get to the counter-terrorist command. It is a constant challenge to recruit people from different communities, so I think that there is no doubt that Dal Babu’s comment that we want more Muslims to be part of the police and in particular in this area, is true.
Mr Winnick
He is very critical; he says that the Prevent programme is a “toxic brand” run mainly by white police officers with “little understanding” of Islam, gender or race. He says that the people involved have few or no roots in the communities that they are trying to support—in other words, to stop people being radicalised, engaging in terrorism and the rest. In effect, what can the Metropolitan police do at this stage to meet such criticism?
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe
Before we go to Mark, I will say one quick thing. Generally, I do not think you have to be from a group to be sensitive to or work with a certain group, whether that is a racial group or a belief group. The police have to work with all groups. We have already said clearly to this Committee that I want better representation from all members in London, so I accept that general point. The second thing is that we do an awful lot of training to sensitise our officers and educate them on the beliefs of different people and how their cultures develop. That is pretty hard to do in London, where more than 300 languages are spoken, and that does not take into account all the different beliefs and the various groupings within them. I think there is a limit to how much we can train all our officers, but Mark can perhaps say a little more about what we do.
Mark Rowley
The first point I would make is that in this context we risk conflating Prevent with tackling Islamism and the sort of terrorism we are talking about. Prevent is a much wider programme. It covers, for example, extreme right-wing ideologies and other extreme ideologies. I just make that point. Whether Prevent is the right label, I will leave for others to judge, but in terms of what we need to do and whatever strategies we have in the future, we will want to work with communities to help identify people who are being radicalised and who are becoming extremist. We will want to find ways to tackle that, whether that is policing interventions or, more likely, interventions by other providers or by mental health services. I cannot imagine that we would ever have a strategy whereby we were not trying to prevent radicalisation and extremism. Likewise, I cannot imagine that we would have a strategy where we were not looking to the community for help in terms of information and support in fighting terrorism. I see evidence of us succeeding on both fronts. It is, of course, not perfect, and I would not pretend that it was; it is always going to be messy and difficult, because it is a complicated issue. Over the past year, we think our Prevent interventions have potentially dissuaded 70 people from travelling to Syria. It is a bit of a subjective judgment, but we can see interventions that look to have had that effect. We have recently doubled our work with schools and higher education colleges. A lot of that is because Parliament has just brought in legislation that recognises their greater duties to do so. Prevent has been looking for help, and we have been helping them with that, and the police have been helping with that role.