Teenage girls from London’s East End have been made wards of court because they are thought to be at risk of travelling to areas controlled by the Islamic State terrorists, a judge today has ruled.
The youngsters go to Bethnal Green Academy, the same secondary school as three friends who slipped out of the country in February and made their way to Syria.
Police have compiled a dossier of ‘intelligence’ on a group of teenages believed to be at risk.
Detail of the “running log” was given to Mr Justice Hayden in the High Court Family Division by lawyers at the latest in a series of hearings relating to the girls.
The judge has grounded a number of youngsters in recent weeks after concerns about the possibility of them heading to IS were raised by social workers and police.
His move to make them wards of court bars them from travelling abroad without a judge’s permission.
They include four pupils at Bethnal Green Academy, it has emerged.
This follows on from three of their school mates aged 15 and 16, Kadiza Sultana, Shamima Begum and Amira Abase, who disappeared from their homes in Bethnal Green and travelled together to Gatwick during half-term in February.
They took a flight to Turkey, where they slipped across the border into Syria to join a fourth girl from the same school who vanished in December.
A barrister representing the Met Police outlined evidence in a 39-page document at a High Court hearing yesterday.
The log contained several pages of intelligence on individual girls, Mr Justice Hayden was told.
Evidence was heard from Scotland Yard’s anti-terror specialists and from social workers during a series of court hearings.
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