Austrian jihadi teen girls want to leave Syria, ISIS, come home: reports

Sydney: The two Austrian teenagers who reportedly became part of ISIS in Syria are now desperate to come home after becoming disillusioned with their 'new' lifestyle.

Samra Kesinovic, 17, and Sabina Selimovic, 15, who grew up in Vienna and enjoyed the freedom to wear whatever they wanted and to meet whoever they wanted, were reportedly told by radical preacher Ebu Tejma at a local mosque about the evils of their lifestyle.

Clerics persuaded the girls that the only way to know true peace was to head to Syria and take part in the holy war. The two had started lecturing classmates about their lifestyles and were even suspected of a vandalism attack at their school that called for jihad.

When they left Vienna in April, they almost certainly had somebody helping them to get out of the country, police said. They left behind a note telling their parents: "Don't look for us. We will serve Allah — and we will die for him."

But once they had arrived, they were married off to local fighters and are now believed to be pregnant, reported a London based daily newspaper.

Police in Austria said the girls' social media accounts were taken over and manipulated to broadcast fake messages about their new lives, and that Kesinovic and Selimovic have been used to encourage other young women to head to Syria. Security service insiders have told Austrian media that the girls have managed to contact their families to say they have had enough and want to come home.

However, experts warn there is almost no chance that the young ladies will be able to leave their new lives now that they’ve become internationally famous and their images have been shared around the world.

The social media accounts show them smiling and wearing their new traditional clothing, flanked by armed Muslim fighters. Some images seemed to depict Selimovic and Kesinovic carrying weapons, but it was later revealed that many of them had been faked.

“It is clear that whoever is operating their pages, it probably is not the girls, and that they are being used for propaganda," one of the security experts said.

Austrian newspaper Oesterreich is known to have close connections to those investigating the girls’ disappearance and is in close contact with their families. The paper reports that the girls are currently in ISIS-controlled Rakka, a city in northern Syria.

According to Oesterreich, the girls changed their minds after being faced with the realities of the brutal Islamic State regime and want to return home. But Austiran Interior Ministry spokesman Karl-Heinz Grundboeck said their decision might be too late.

"The main problem is about people coming back to Austria. Once they leave it is almost impossible," he said.