Turkish Airlines have "serious questions" to answer over why they allowed three British schoolgirls said to be heading to Syria on to a flight unaccompanied, the shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper has said.
"Why were such young people allowed to fly on their own in the first place? And why - when we know other young people seeking to travel to Syria have initially travelled to Turkey - did the airline not raise immediate concerns to the police and security services?
"The Government had told us they were already working with the airlines to disrupt people travelling via Turkey to Syria so it is extremely hard to understand why it has taken until now for the Home Secretary and the Transport Secretary to contact Turkish Airlines about this."
Julian Bray Aviation Security Expert comments: Its all very well for politicians to sound off about this but the fact is that airport ground staff are employed by a company other than the airline and not linked to flying cabin or flight crew or airline airport staff. If its all running smoothly and no alarms raised they have little contact with each other. In fact many thousands of children daily fly unaccompanied, and only on a few airlines is a chaperone or intervention service supplied.
Their school an Academy say access to social media is restricted on THEIR computers but as most tablets and phones have access to free wifi and the internet. It is easy for young people to hoodwink their old style traditional parents. Who tunes the video player, TIVO or remote box in your house?
Local authorities also need to share some of the blame, access to jihadist recruiting websites are not routinely blocked and supervision is at a minimum I know as I've seen it in my own City
The girls for example could be in transit between say home and a boarding school in a different country. That is the basic problem and to interfere would be held as a denial of basic human rights in terms of freedom of movement. The only way to shut this down is for Turkey and other destination countries to impose visa restrictions on those who seek to travel to their country but this overnight would decimate the holiday trade and of course the cheapest way to travel to Turkey during the Summer will be consolidated charter air travel, using only the outward leg of the charter ticket and then heading for the border with Syria. Who will be policing that?
So the blame should rest firmly with the politicians, specifically they need to though emergency legislation enable any late intervention to lawfully take place and to recompense the airline for a late and or delayed/cancelled departure and having to offload and reload palletised luggage which is handled by another company or sub-contractor. So you begin to see the problem is set at many different levels.
The girls had ditched traditional dress, and on CCTV would not appear to be distressed or upset, or displaying any outward signs of acting under duress. Usually if girls of Asian origin are being flown out the country say for an arranged marriage, they can be picked up at the search and x-ray stage as anti abuse organisations simply tell the girls to slip a spoon in their pocket, to set off metal detectors. The parents had not reported them missing for some hours by which time they were in flight or already within Turkey. Immediately on arrival, they would have been met and driven off by Islamic State who have several supply routes already in place...in this part of the world money talks and ISIS is exceptionally well minted and we are not talking about tea...
Their school an Academy say access to social media is restricted on THEIR computers but as most tablets and phones have access to free wifi and the internet. It is easy for young people to hoodwink their old style traditional parents. Who tunes the video player, TIVO or remote box in your house?
Local authorities also need to share some of the blame, access to jihadist recruiting websites are not routinely blocked and supervision is at a minimum I know as I've seen it in my own City
JULIAN BRAY ++44(0)1733 345581, Journalist, Broadcaster, Aviation Security & Operations Expert, Travel / Cruise Industry, EQUITY, NUJ, Broadcast COOBE ISDN ++44 (0)1733 345020 (DUAL CODEC) SKYPE: JULIAN.BRAY.UK e&oe Cell: 07944 217476 or iPhone 0743 530 3145 #VENDOR 10476453 http://feeds.feedburner.com/BraysDuckhouseBlog
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