The girls left a note for their parents before they set off to Syria saying: “Don’t look for us. We will serve Allah – and we will die for him”
Vienna – Two Austrian teenagers who became poster girls for Islamic State are now desperate to come home after reportedly becoming disillusioned with their jihadi lifestyle.
Samra Kesinovic, 17, and her friend Sabina Selimovic, 15, were persuaded to travel to war-torn Syria in April.
The girls, who are the children of Bosnian migrants, had started lecturing schoolmates in Vienna about their Islamic beliefs and left behind a note telling their parents: “Don’t look for us. We will serve Allah – and we will die for him”.
Once they arrived it is believed they were married off to local fighters and both the girls are thought to be pregnant.
Police in their homeland Austria say that the girls’ social media accounts were taken over and manipulated to broadcast what they now think were fake messages about the life they were having, and using them as poster girls to encourage other young girls to head to Syria.
But security service insiders have told Austrian media that the girls have managed to contact their families to say they have had enough, and want to come home.
However they warn that there is almost no chance that they will be able to leave their new lives.
Both sets of parents had been trying to find ways to contact their daughters and it is believed some way of communicating had been established.
It is thought the girls are currently in the IS stronghold of Rakka in northern Syria.
Spokesman for the Austrian Interior Ministry, Karl-Heinz Grundboeck, said the teens might not be able to return to the country
He said: “The main problem is about people coming back to Austria. Once they leave it is almost impossible”
The news comes despite reports which surfaced last month that one of the girls may have been killed.
The motivations of the two Bosnian girls are unclear but before leaving, they had contact with Chechen youths, and visited a mosque in Vienna’s second district.
And police also expressed concerns that the pair were inspiring their contemporaries after two other teenage girls were caught attempting to flee the country to join IS ranks.
Little information was given about the copycat pair hoping to join Islamic State apart from the fact that one was 16 and the other was 14 and their parents were apparently from Iraq.
Police now want to find out how they became radicalised, and whether anybody had helped them plan their trip to Syria which was apparently set to take place via Turkey – following the same route as the other two girls.
The pair were caught when the mother of a third friend who was supposed to be travelling with them became suspicious about the amount of luggage her daughter was packing.
As many as 130 people from Austria are now believed to be fighting as jihadists abroad.
More than half of Austrian’s jihadists originally come from the Caucasus region and have a valid residence permit in Austria. (mirror.co.uk)
