British police must urgently set up round-the-clock communications with their counterparts in Turkey to stop Britons crossing into territory controlled by Islamic State, a prominent MP has said.
Keith Vaz, chair of the home affairs select committee, made the demands after meeting the husbands of two of three sisters who are feared to have travelled to Syria with their children to join the terror group.
Bradford-born sisters Khadija Dawood, 30, Sugra Dawood, 34, and Zohra Dawood, 33, and their nine children, aged between three and 15, are feared to have travelled via Istanbul after visiting Saudi Arabia for a religious pilgrimage.
Vaz, Labour MP for Leicester East, met Sugra’s husband, Akhtar Iqbal, and Mohammad Shoaib, husband of Khadija, to discuss the situation on Monday.
A lawyer acting for the men wrote to Vaz over the weekend accusing UK police of beingcomplicit in the alleged “grooming and radicalising” of the three Bradford sisters, saying the husbands were “extremely disappointed with the manner in which this matter is being investigated by West Yorkshire police”.
Following the meeting on Monday Vaz said in a statement: “I met today with the fathers and their legal representatives for one and a quarter hours. They were clearly heartbroken, and want to be reunited with their wives and children as soon as possible.
“They expressed serious concerns about how the police have dealt with their wives over a number of months. I will be meeting with the Counter Terror Unit from the region tomorrow.”
Vaz said there were a number of urgent measures that should be put in place.
“Firstly, we need a hotline between the UK and Istanbul. Isis work on a 24/7 basis and our Consulate in Istanbul must also work continuously. We cannot continue to rely on emails. Rather like the Bethnal Green case, the system needs to cope better with these urgent cases,” he said, referring to the Bethnal Green teenagers who ran away together to Turkey and are believed to have joined Isis.
“Secondly,” wrote Vaz, “the police need to meet with the fathers at a senior level urgently to clear the lines of communication.
“Thirdly, the prime minister is right that we must bring an end to the ‘finger pointing’. This is a fight for hearts and minds of British citizens being groomed by Isis. Our efforts need to be led by the families and communities.”
Last week the men’s lawyer told the Guardian that the Met police had just one counter-terror officer in Turkey.
In response, Scotland Yard said the officer in Turkey had extremely limited scope and acted only in cooperation with the local authorities, inferring that families may have unrealistic expectations about what police could do once their relatives had left the UK.
“We have no powers in that jurisdiction, we can’t go over to other countries and start setting up offices,” a spokesperson said. “The officer’s job is to liaise with the Turkish authorities once he is given information and has built up good contacts with the relevant people in order to gain information for investigations here.
“We rely on the Turkish police and we have a good relationship with them which has had good results in a number of cases in recent weeks. But beyond that is not realistic.”
