Islamic State: how can young Brits be stopped from joining?
Assed Baig reports from Dewsbury, where people are trying to understand why two Yorkshire teenagers, including reported suicide bomber Talha Asmal, ran away to a distant conflict.
Seventeen-year-old Talha Asmal’s family said he had been targeted, befriended, groomed and exploited. He fled his home in Dewsbury in March to allegedly join Islamic State (IS) with his friend Hassan Munshi, also 17 and from Dewsbury.
Young people like them are being lured to Syria and Iraq via social media. Channel 4 News has spoken to someone close to the teenagers, who did not want to appear on camera, but said they had been passing around IS videos on their phones using apps such as WhatsApp and that they had been discussing going to Syria since last year.
Channel 4 News was also told they were in contact with recruiters in London and Syria using an encrypted messaging service called Surespot, and before he left Talha Asmal had a heated discussion with an imam who tried to convince him IS ideology was wrong.
