French intelligence officials got in touch with the parents of a shy, 15-year-old Muslim girl in this depressed town in eastern France last May to convey some shocking news: Their daughter had become a frequent visitor to websites preaching jihad.Amazingly, her 15 years of being brought up under the religion of peace didn't stop her from eagerly wanting to kill random Jews.
The parents asked the French authorities to take steps to block their child from leaving the country and took possession of her passport, according to local officials. In the months that followed, the girl showed no sign that she intended to head for Syria or Iraq. She took off her veil to go to school, as French law requires, and she spent her days close to her mother.
Then in October, she disappeared. The surveillance cameras in the Mulhouse airport, 50 miles from her home, showed her moving confidently and alone as she used her older sister’s passport to fly to Istanbul and then on to Gaziantep, a Turkish city known as the gateway to Syria for jihadists.
...Another 15-year-old girl, who was intercepted by French intelligence officers as she tried to go to Syria months ago, has since told the authorities that once her recruiters realized she was unlikely to be able to leave the country anytime soon, they began pressing her to strike at home against Jews. She told them she had begun looking for weapons and targets.
...The 15-year-old who told the authorities she was pressed to attack Jews in France said she had already picked a location and figured out how to arm herself before the police arrested her, according to Dounia Bouzar, an anthropologist who founded an anti-radicalization center in Paris.
(h/t Ronald)