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NEWS: What makes two teenage sisters run away to become ISIS brides?

 

 

 

Two more girls have reportedly fled their home in Austria — and it’s feared they may have gone to fight with Islamic State in Syria.

The sisters, named only as Viktoria, 16, and Violetta, 17, disappeared from their Vienna home at 11pm last Saturday night and according to the Austrian interior ministry, the girls left with just their clothes and passports.

Austrian girls go to SyriaVioletta and Viktoria. (Photo: Police)

They left behind their the 46-year-old widowed Turkish mother, who lost her husband about a year ago to cancer,  website The Local reports.

“Reviewing their behaviour over the last few weeks I’m convinced and worried that they may have travelled to Syria to join Isis and fight in the Jihad,” the girls’ mother said, according to the website.

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Austrian girls go to Syria
Samra. (Photo: Interpol)

“They were acting a bit strange but as a single mother I was always busy, so perhaps I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have… I last saw them on the weekend when they said they were going down to the shops, but they never came back.”

She said she began to panic when she checked the girls’ rooms and found the both of them had taken their passports, according to the Daily Mail.

“They should only have been gone a few minutes but when an hour had gone past I worried, and when I looked there was no sign of them,” she said. “The two seemed to have been taking some comfort from religion but I was worried lately that they appeared to be getting a bit extreme.”Earlier in the year, Mamamia reported that two other girls fled their homes in Austria and ran away to Syria. Samra Kesinovic, 17, and her friend Sabina Selimovic, 15, are believed to have become radicalised after coming into contact with Chechen youths, according to the International Business Times.

On 10 April, they vanished from their homes, leaving behind a letter that told their horrified families they had gone to the Middle East “to fight for Islam”.

“No point looking for us: See you in paradise”, they reportedly wrote. “We will serve Allah and die for him”.

Austrian girls go to Syria
Sabina. (Photo: Interpol)

Kesinovic and Selimovic are believed to have travelled to Syria to support the Islamic State – a claim fuelled by a series of photos posted on social media, which show the girls branding rifles and surrounded by armed men.

Ms Selimovic recently gave an interview via text message to French Paris Match magazine, saying she can “really be free” among her new militant colleagues — but experts say she was probably coerced into making the statements.

Ms Selimovic said: “I like to eat. The food here is very similar to Austria even if it’s mainly halal food.”

She added she could access cornflakes and Nutella in her new home.

“Here I can really be free,” Ms Selimovic said. “I can practice my religion.” 

Austrian girls go to Syria
(Photo: Central European News)

“I couldn’t do that in Vienna.”

But Austrian anti-terror agents believe the interview with the girl, who is now married to a jihadi fighter, was probably carried out at gunpoint — and friends and family of the girl claim she has told them in online conversations she wanted to come home, the Daily Mail reports.

CEN also reports that authorities who analysed the transcript of the interview are almost certain the teenager would have been threatened into keeping any anti-IS sentiment out of the interview.

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