The home secretary has said attempts to get women and children to go to Syria are a “pernicious new phenomenon” and directly appealed to those tempted to go by saying: “Do not travel.”
Speaking at a police counter-terrorism conference in London on Thursday, Theresa May said the deadliest threat came from Islamic State (Isis). “They want to lure young women and families with false promises of starting a new life,” she said.
Her comments came after it emerged that three sisters from Bradford were believed to have travelled to Syria with their nine children. Parts of the country are controlled by Isis.
The home secretary said Isis used the “powerful allure” of propaganda to “recruit and brainwash” men and women and poison others against western values.
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan police commissioner, used the conference to call for more research to understand why people were attracted to a regime many considered barbaric.
“We’ve got to understand more and come up with some structured way of intervening better,” he said. “There can never be any justification for a child being taken to a war zone.”
Hogan-Howe described the apparent situation of children being taken to Syria as difficult to understand. “Do you need to tell a mother not to take a child to a war zone? That seems really difficult. It must be that they are getting overwhelmed by some passion for the things they are attracted to in terms of what they believe is happening in Syria,” he said.
Hogan-Howe also said it was too early to conclude that new powers to seize passports should be broadened to cover situations where there might be a child safety issue: “We have to look at some of these cases. There are powers available and we have to make sure we’ve got enough information to use them.”
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