Poor passport checks let 'ISIS' schoolgirls flee to Syria as they should have been 'red-flagged'

Friends Shamima Begum, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15, were reportedly seen in Syria at the weekend after flying to Turkey on Tuesday

Poor passport checks: The girls are believed to have fled to Syria

Major flaws in the UK border system have been exposed by the three schoolgirls who fled to Syria, senior immigration sources say.
Friends Shamima Begum, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15, were reportedly seen in Syria at the weekend after flying to Turkey on Tuesday.
Scotland Yard is said to be furious at how the UK Border Force and Turkish Airlines failed to question the girls who were minors travelling without adults.
A 15-year-old girl from their East London school travelled alone to Turkey in December.
She is believed to be living in Islamic State-controlled Syria.

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An immigration source said: “It would be possible to flag up minors travelling without an adult to Istanbul. This has not happened.”

Former head of Border Force Brodie Clark said: “There are serious gaps in border security, especially with exit checks.”
The main system for carrying out exit checks, the e-Borders programme, was launched by Labour in 2003 but axed last year.
The Coalition government said it had lost confidence in Raytheon, the US firm chosen to deliver the project, after it fell a year behind schedule.

'ISIS' girls: Poor passport checks to blame?

The girls, who boarded flight TK1966 to Istanbul at 6.40pm, were reportedly spotted in the Syrian town of Tal Abyad on Saturday, travelling with a Syrian male in a car.
Amira’s dad Abase Hussen, 47, said her family “cannot stop crying” as he appealed for her to return home.
She had told them she was going to a wedding. He said: “There was no sign to suspect her at all.”
He said they had asked her about the fellow Bethnal Green Academy pupil who went to Syria last year.
He said: “She always said, ‘I’m sad for that little girl’.”

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Shamima told her mother she had extra school classes.

Sister Renu, 27, said: “She was just our baby, just herself.
“If someone persuaded them to go to Syria, it’s a really cruel and evil thing to do”, she added.
Shamima had followed an IS agent called Umm Waqqas on Twitter.
It is suspected the same woman persuaded Glasgow former public schoolgirl Aqsa Mahmood, 20, to go to Syria.
The Home Office said it was on track to introduce exit checks by the end of ­Parliament.
A spokesman said: “We are providing more data than any previous government. Advance information is being collected from 96% of air passengers.”