AUSTRIAN law enforcement officials say two teenage girls have been detained on suspicion of seeking to travel to Syria as potential wives for militants fighting there.
Marcus Neher of the Salzburg public prosecutor’s office says they were detained in Salzburg and Upper Austria province on Saturday. He says they were “offering themselves as spouses for IS fighters.â€
Neher declined to give further details Sunday. The Austria Press Agency says the Salzburg suspect was 16 and originally came from Chechnya, while the other girl was 17 and born in Bosnia.
APA says the two were detained after investigations that began last month when the 16-year old was turned back to Austria by Romanian authorities while en route to Syria. She is suspected of recruiting potential IS wives, including the 17-year old.
The latest detention comes following the-high profile case of Austrian teens Samra Kesinovic, 16, and Sabina Selimovic, 15, who are thought to have been seduced by the deadly Islamic State last year.
The pair went missing from their suburban homes Vienna and pictures on social media appear to show the friends in Syria amid reports they had married IS fighters with one of them becoming pregnant.
In December United Nations Security Council Israeli David Scharia claimed one of the teens was dead and the other had vanished, however it has not been confirmed.
The role of women in terror attacks has also been highlighted as French police hunt for Hayat Boumeddiene, the suspected accomplice after the terrorist attack on a Kosher grocery store in Paris over the weekend.
Meanwhile Britain’s Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has revealed officers in the UK seized four girls believed to be heading to join IS. One 15-year-old year old was pulled off a plane at Heathrow, another had recently returned from Turkey and two others were arrested when they tried to leave ports, the Mirror reports.
The Commissioner warned parents to tell police of their suspicions before it’s too late.
“If you tell us before they go, we’ve got a chance to do something about it. When they’re gone it’s too late,†he said.
“There’s no structure in these countries, there is no law. The only law that matters is the gun. Do they want their kids to go to that?â€