70 Women, Including 9 Schoolgirls, Left Germany to Join ’ISIL’
Local Editor
More than 70 German women, nine of whom are schoolgirls, have left their home country for Syria and Iraq to join the "ISIL", the president of the German Domestic Intelligence Service [BFV] said.
According to Hans-Georg Maassen, 40 percent of those women are under the age of 25, Zeit Online reported.
While the recruitment of young girls and women by the "ISIL" is not a rare phenomenon, Maassen warned that extremists have lately focused on luring females to join the so-called 'caliphate' via social networks.
Maassen says they write blogs with "romantic descriptions" of life in extremist camps, and the females have no idea about the future they are actually agreeing to. Most often, those who travel to be with terrorists are completely isolated, their passport and phones taken away.
Security services currently have no information on whether European women are intended to be used by the extremists as suicide terrorists, but say they cannot exclude the possibility.
The German Domestic Intelligence Service says the overall number of those who have left the country to fight in Syria and Iraq on the side of the terrorists is around 650 people.
Earlier in March, German Interior Minister Thomas de Mazière said around 200 of them had returned home. Actions have already been taken against some of the returnees, while others remain under strict surveillance.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
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