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First Footage Of Islamic State Grooming HQ

Sky News has obtained exclusive pictures of the online grooming centre used by terror group Islamic State.

The internet cafe in the Syrian city of Raqqa is the heart of the IS online operation, where fighters try to persuade young and vulnerable foreigners to leave their homes and travel to the war-torn country.

Sky News Chief Correspondent Stuart Ramsay said the cameraman had risked his life to get the footage.

It shows fighters and children milling around, chatting and laughing in the cafe, where they work in shifts according to their nationality and the time zones of the people they are targeting.

Ramsay also spoke with Um Asmah, one of the most senior defectors from IS, who shared information on the sophisticated grooming plans to bring young foreigners to Syria to train and then return home to carry out attacks.

She said: "IS is not stupid, they have educated people who know how to deal with (the) psychology of others, how to deal with the human being. All these are in IS.

"IS have the ability to manipulate the minds of young people. If they can convince foreigners, it is even easier to convince Arabs and Syrians."

The interview came as a study warned against thinking that women travel to Syria solely to become "jihadi brides".

It described the theory as "simplistic" and "hinder(ing) efforts to prevent other girls from being radicalised".

Other motivations include anger over the perceived persecution of Muslims and the wish to belong to a sisterhood of shared beliefs, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King's College London.

The report's authors, Erin Saltman and Melanie Smith, say that describing the women as "brainwashed, groomed, innocent girls hinders understanding of the threat they pose".

Ms Smith said: "They're not being taken seriously. It's inherently dangerous to label people with the same brush."

Around 550 young women, some as young as 13, are estimated to have already travelled to Islamic State-controlled territory.

The authors looked at the social media accounts of more than 100 females on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr, using photos, online chats and other accounts to place them in Syria or Iraq.

The women came from 15 countries and were largely operating in English.

They often talked about the camaraderie they experienced after moving to IS-controlled territory, regularly posting images of veiled "sisters" posing together.

This was in contrast to the "false feeling or surface-level relationships" they talked of having held in the West, the report says.

Glasgow woman Aqsa Mahmood, 20, fled to Syria to become a jihadi bride in 2013 but has since been blamed for using Twitter to entice Shamima Begum, a 15-year-old London schoolgirl, to leave her family for Syria, along with Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15 .

The report says some women go in search of romance and marriage.

Images shared online of a lion and lioness are used to symbolise a union with a "brave, strong husband".

The idea promoted by the group's social media "messengers" is that "supporting a jihadist husband and taking on the ISIS ideology is an empowering role for females".

But the reality is quite different.

Any woman posting messages critical of life under IS is quickly reprimanded, say the report's authors, with the Twitter hashtag #nobodycaresaboutthewidow having only a very short cyberlife, for example.

But some women living under IS warn those following them that they should be ready to "be tested" by intermittent electricity, water shortages, bitter winters and the challenges of life in a warzone.

Healthcare is particularly difficult, with one western woman describing her experience of having a miscarriage in an IS hospital because she could not communicate with the doctor.