3 Teenage Girls Arrested While Escaping School To Join Terrorist Group

Three 17-year-old American girls, one of Sudanese descent and two of Somali descent were arrested in Germany on their way to Turkey after ditching class to join Islamic State militants.

CNN reports that the girls had lied to their parents about showing up in school on the day they departed for Turkey to join ISIS in Syria.

The first indication that something wasn't right was a phone call form the high school of one of the girls to her father, Assad Ibrahim, letting him know his daughter had not come to class.

According to officials, Ibrahim had dialed his daughter's phone and she answered, but didn't tell him she was on her way to Syria to join the terrorist group.

She was just late for class, that's all, Ibrahim's daughter told him on Friday, according to the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office, which filed a runaway report.

Two more girls, sisters

Those two had told their father, Ali Farah, that they were going to the library.

But when Farah got home from work, a visitor came calling, according to the documents. Apparently, it was Ibrahim.

Farah should check to see if his daughters' passports were missing, the visitor told him -- just like his daughter's passport was.

Sure enough, they were gone, along with $2,000 in cash.

The two families called the FBI. They said they thought the girls were on their way to Turkey.

The agency put out a notice on their passports.

German authorities intercepted the trio, ages 15, 16 and 17, at Frankfurt airport and put them on a plane back to the United States, where they were greeted by FBI agents.

The three girls were questioned and released. Two U.S. officials say they had planned to join militants with ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Out of the blue

The girls' parents say they had no idea their children planned to travel. None of them had ever run away before.

Their disappearance hit them out of the blue, the way other ISIS related incidents are popping up in the Western world. Two more turned up in tandem with the girls' runaway attempt.

On Monday, a radical convert to Islam in Canada ran down two soldiers in his car, killing one of them. Martin Rouleau Couture, 25, then led police on a chase before his car rolled into a ditch in the town of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, southeast of Montreal.

He exited the car, and police shot him dead.

Back in July, Couture, too, had tried to join foreign jihad, and Canadian police arrested him on his way to Turkey. But they could not charge him and had to let him go.

And this week, a video turned up of a 17-year-old Australian boy standing with ISIS fighters and threatening to behead Western leaders, including President Obama, then fly the ISIS flag over the White House.

Girls' online activities

In Denver, the 17-year-old girl was apparently the instigator of the trip, having planned it for months, two U.S. officials said.

But all three researched the plan online, visiting websites where extremists discuss how to get to Syria. The online activity didn't set off any tripwires the FBI typically uses to flag possible jihadist sympathizers, the officials said.

The FBI is combing all of their communications to see if anyone was helping them. Their parents think ISIS was behind the trip.

Investigators are also not sure the girls had even worked out the final goal for their travel.

As was the case with the Canadian, Couture, the investigation into the travel will probably not lead to charges, especially because the girls are minors, the two U.S. officials said.

On Monday, Sheriff's Deputy Evan Driscoll visited the two girls of Somali descent in their home and had a conversation with them.

"The girls explained that they stole the $2,000 and their passports from their mother," he wrote in the runaway report.

They wouldn't tell Driscoll why they flew to Germany.

The deputy called dispatchers and had the girls' runaway listing removed.