A Bradford woman who is feared to be travelling to Syria with her husband and five children has told family members she is doing what is “best for the kids”, a relative has said.
West Yorkshire police launched an appeal late on Tuesday to trace Farzana Ameen, 40, her husband, Imran, 40, and their five children, aged between five and 15.
Arshid Siddique, a relative who lives in the same street in Bradford, said that Farzana Ameen had contacted her brother in Pakistan on Tuesday. She had also recently travelled to Pakistan with her mother, who has health issues, to leave her in the care of relatives, according to Siddique.
He said family are now concerned that a relative of Imran Ameen who has not been seen for up to a year may have travelled ahead to Syria.
Siddique told the Guardian he was initially under the impression the family had left for Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. He said: “But when you don’t hear anything at all for a while, the rest of the family hadn’t heard anything, doubts start coming into your mind, and as soon as I saw police here, I knew.
“She never talked about it at all. Her mother had a stroke and she was bedridden, she couldn’t even talk. Let’s face it, there is no better medical care than here. Why would anyone want to leave? She was born here, her kids were born here.
“Anything going on in Syria was never discussed with me, never. I cannot understand it. I’m trying to think what was going through her head but as a parent, I can’t think of it. I’m a Muslim, I feel for what’s happening over there. But reality says, what can I do there?
“What can my kids do there? It’s a war zone. Her brother said to me today, if she wanted to live in Muslim country, why didn’t she move [to Pakistan]?
“Upset is an understatement, her brother is heartbroken she could do this. And she had told him she was going back to Pakistan in two weeks. It’s the lies. If me or her brother had known, we would not have let it happen. I would have stopped it. If you can’t stop it, you pick up the phone to the people who can.”
He added: “I hope they haven’t got into Syria and then there’s still a chance. I don’t give a damn about [the parents] now to be honest, but it’s the kids and what they’ve put them through.”
Earlier, Siddique told BBC Radio Leeds that Ameen had been in touch with her brother in Pakistan: “She has spoken to him. She sent him messages, and apparently the last message was: whatever she’s doing she’s doing for the best for the kids.”
Siddique said Ameen’s husband ran a small online business selling car parts.
Detectives are working with UK-based relatives of the family, who were last seen on 5 October but were not reported missing until Tuesday, as well as with Turkish authorities.
Assistant chief constable Russ Foster of West Yorkshire police said: “We would urge anyone with information about the family’s whereabouts to come forward and speak to police so the family can safely return to the UK. Any piece of information, no matter how small, could help the UK or overseas authorities to locate the family so that they can be safely returned home to their loved ones.”
The appeal comes less than four months after police asked for the public’s help to track down three sisters and their nine children who left for Syria. Khadija Dawood, 30, her sisters Sugra, 34, Zohra, 33, and their children, aged between three and 15, went missing after travelling to Turkey via Saudi Arabia on pilgrimage.
Police and security services believe at least 700 potential extremists have travelled from the UK to Syria, and around half are thought to have returned home.
Many of those fleeing the UK to Syria go to territories under the control of Islamic State, who have seized large swaths of the war-torn country and its neighbour Iraq.
Met police assistant commissioner Mark Rowley, Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism officer, has disclosed that suspects are being arrested at a rate of more than one a day. He also revealed that at least 32 children in London had been made the subject of family court orders this year over fears of radicalisation, including some described by the assistant commissioner as “almost babes in arms”.
In the first official count of women and girls from the UK thought to have gone to Syria, police in July said that 43 were believed to have done so in the past year.
