Unclear if Islamic State runaways can return to Britain - minister

By Kieran Guilbert LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - British interior minister Theresa May declined on Wednesday to say whether three British teenage brides of Islamic State fighters in Iraq who are reported to have escaped the militant group would be allowed back into the country. Asked about the teenagers, May said that attempts by such people to return from Syria or Iraq would be decided on a case-by-case basis. "People have come back – youngsters who have gone there and suddenly realise what a mistake they've made," May told ITV. The girls were reported to have escaped the militants by Mosul Eye, a blog that says it reports events in the northern city of Mosul, captured by Islamic State last year. "Three girls, (Foreigners – British) married to Isil [Isis] militants, reported missing, and Isil announced to all its check points to search for them. It is believed that those girls have escaped," Mosul Eye posted on its Facebook page on May 2. Islamic State, the militant Sunni Muslim group, declared an Islamic caliphate across parts of Syria and Iraq it seized last summer, and has killed thousands of people. Some 600 people from Britain, around 10 percent of them female, have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join the conflict, mostly supporting Islamic State, according to anti-extremism think tank The Quilliam Foundation. Three British girls from Bethnal Green academy – Shamima Begum, 15, Amira Abase, 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16 – disappeared from their homes in east London in February and flew to Turkey, before crossing the border into Syria. Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said in March that the girls would be allowed to return home to their families if they could be persuaded to do so. Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said the three girls were different from people "running around in northern Iraq and Syria with Kalashnikovs" who then apologised for having committed terrorist offences. It is not known whether the three girls the Mosul Eye blogger said were on the run are the three teenagers from the school in Bethnal Green. The Quilliam Foundation said previously that female supporters of Islamic State were using social media to persuade European Muslims to travel to Iraq and Syria with "the promise of an Islamist utopia". (Reporting By Kieran Guilbert; Editing by Tim Pearce)