Skip to main content

‘She wants to go home’: Father of Russian ‘ISIS recruit’ to RT after meeting 19yo daughter








Varvara Karaulova (Photo from facebook.com)



A Russian teenage girl, who had been caught in Turkey on her way to Syria, is awaiting deportation to Russia. The father of the suspected Islamic State (IS) recruit spoke to RT after seeing his daughter for the first time since she ran away.

“We met warmly, we hugged and kissed. The first thing she asked me was, 'Daddy, when will you get me out of here? When will we go home?” Pavel Karaulov, father of Varvara Karaulova told RT.

The father said that the he was only able to exchange “I love you” phrases with Varvara, as their meeting was limited to five minutes according to the Turkish procedural rule.






“The most important thing was to make sure that Varvara's health is alright, that she feels good, that she’s is kept in normal conditions,”Pavel told RT. He also wanted to make sure that his daughter has everything she needs.

The 19-year-old appeared to have lost some weight, but the medical examination proved she was in good health. “Varvara is a very brave person. She did not complain. On the contrary, she requested medical staff to treat the children first,” Pavel said.

The father says Turkey is finalizing the investigation and he hopes that the authorities will allow his daughter to leave the country with him, “without deportation.” He also hopes that Turkey will “not press any charges,” added that he is optimistic that Varvara could be released by the end of the week, if everything goes to plan.

For now, Pavel says, the “most important” thing was to get reassurance from Varvara that she does want to go home. “She is crying… The child who is subject to heavy psychological pressure can and should count on understanding,” he told RT.

Karaulov says his family will offer his daughter all the support she needs: “This is a psychological trauma. We have to live through it together, possibly with the help from specialists.”

The girl fled home at the end of May and booked a one-way flight to Istanbul. After an international search was launched for several days, she was detained at the Turkey-Syrian border on suspicion she wanted to cross over and join IS.

Before her escape, investigators said there were signs the girl could have been radicalized. Varvara stopped wearing a cross and even put on a hijab as she attended university. However, her father says there was not any solid evidence that his daughter wanted to link-up with IS.

Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev warned that IS and other jihadi groups are actively trying to recruit teens not only from the West but also from Russia and the former Soviet republics and are “focusing their efforts on national minorities.”


“In these circumstances, special service and law enforcement agencies around the world need to strengthen their joint action to curb the work of recruiters and citizens' traveling abroad where terrorist organizations remain active,” Patrushev told Interfax.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why States Still Use Barrel Bombs

Smoke ascends after a Syrian military helicopter allegedly dropped a barrel bomb over the city of Daraya on Jan. 31.(FADI DIRANI/AFP/Getty Images) Summary Barrel bombs are not especially effective weapons. They are often poorly constructed; they fail to detonate more often than other devices constructed for a similar purpose; and their lack of precision means they can have a disproportionate effect on civilian populations. However, combatants continue to use barrel bombs in conflicts, including in recent and ongoing conflicts in Africa and the Middle East, and they are ideally suited to the requirements of resource-poor states. Analysis Barrel bombs are improvised devices that contain explosive filling and shrapnel packed into a container, often in a cylindrical shape such as a barrel. The devices continue to be dropped on towns all over Syria . Indeed, there have been several documented cases of their use in Iraq over the past months, and residents of the city of Mosul, which was re
Post a Comment
Read more

Russia Looks East for New Oil Markets

Click to Enlarge In the final years of the Soviet Union, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev began orienting his foreign policy toward Asia in response to a rising Japan. Putin has also piloted a much-touted pivot to Asia, coinciding with renewed U.S. interest in the area. A good expression of intent was Russia's hosting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in 2012 in Vladivostok, near Russia's borders with China and North Korea. Although its efforts in Asia have been limited by more direct interests in Russia's periphery and in Europe, Moscow recently has been able to look more to the east. Part of this renewed interest involves finding new export markets for Russian hydrocarbons. Russia's economy relies on energy exports, particularly crude oil and natural gas exported via pipeline to the West. However, Western Europe is diversifying its energy sources as new supplies come online out of a desire to reduce its dependence on Russian energy supplies . This has
Post a Comment
Read more

LONDON POLICE INDIRECTLY ENCOURAGE CRIMINALS TO ATTACK RUSSIAN DIPLOMATIC PROPERTY

ILLUSTRATIVE IMAGE A few days ago an unknown perpetrator trespassed on the territory of the Russian Trade Delegation in London, causing damage to the property and the vehicles belonging to the trade delegation , Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during the September 12 press briefing. The diplomat revealed the response by the London police was discouraging. Police told that the case does not have any prospects and is likely to be closed. This was made despite the fact that the British law enforcement was provided with video surveillance tapes and detailed information shedding light on the incident. By this byehavior, British law inforcements indirectly encourage criminals to continue attacks on Russian diplomatic property in the UK. Zakharova’s statement on “Trespassing on the Russian Trade Mission premises in London” ( source ): During our briefings, we have repeatedly discussed compliance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, specif
1 comment
Read more