Three Denver teen girls suspected of trying to join ISIS in Syria have been sent back home to their parents after being questioned by the FBI.
The girls ran away from home and made it as far as Frankfurt, Germany, from where they had planned to travel to Turkey and enter Syria where they would join the terrorist group,
according to CNN. But their parents found out about the plot and immediately contacted the FBI.
According to Voice of America, as part of the ruse one of girls told German officials that they planned to study in Turkey.
The girls, ages 17, 16 and 15, are of Sudanese and Somali descent and had kept quiet about their plans, but their parents were tipped off that something was wrong when school officials called notifying them that they had not shown up for school on Friday, reported CNN.
The parents would later find out that their passports were missing along with $2,000 in cash.
"The families indicated they didn't know where they were at and they did not know where they were going," Arapahoe County sheriff's Bureau Chief Glenn Thompson told the
Denver Post.
FBI Denver spokeswoman Suzie Payne told the Post that the agency "assisted with bringing the individuals back to Denver. The juveniles are safe and reunited with their families."
The Post said the incident comes after authorities arrested another Denver area woman, Shannon Maureen Conley, 19, for trying to fly to Syria to join ISIS back in July. The newspaper said Conley pleaded guilty to providing material support to al-Qaeda and affiliates, including the Islamic State and will be sentenced Jan. 23.
She could get as much as five years in prison and made to pay $250,000 in fines, according to the Post.
"Everybody is worried now about their kids," Amina Ali, a Somali immigrant, told the Post. "We want to know who recruited them and if they are in Denver or someplace else."
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