UK police defend actions over teenage girls who flew to Syria

British police on Saturday denied accusations that they had failed to pass on crucial information that could have allowed families to stop three teenage girls from traveling to Syria to join Islamic State militants.

Shamima Begum and Amira Abase, both 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16, who all attended the same London school, were reported missing on Feb. 17. They flew to Turkey that day and police believe they subsequently made their way to Syria.

Dozens of Britons, mostly young men but also some young women, have joined Islamic State, causing much angst back home about how they were being radicalized and what could be done to stop them.

Police officers had spoken to the girls in the weeks preceding their departure as part of an investigation into the disappearance of one of their school friends, an unnamed 15-year-old girl, who had left for Syria on Dec. 6.

"The teenagers were all being cooperative, they were all being treated as potential witnesses and there was nothing whatsoever to indicate that they themselves were planning to travel to Syria," the police said in a statement.

Several relatives of the girls have complained to British media in the past two days that they had not been told about the first girl who had gone to Syria.

"The police neglected us, the school neglected us. It would have definitely alarmed me ... 100 percent I would have stopped her. They did not warn us, they did not contact us at all," Hussen Abase, father of Amira, told the Guardian newspaper.