One of three schoolgirls who left London last year to join Islamic State (IS) is believed to have been killed in a Russian air strike in Syria, BBC said in a report citing the girl’s family solicitor.
Kadiza Sultana was 16 when she left Bethnal Green along with two friends.
Her family’s lawyer, Tasnime Akunjee, told BBC Newsnight they heard a report of her death in Raqqa a few weeks ago.
But he said they had not been able to independently confirm it because of the nature of information from Syria.
Akunjee said the teenager had grown disillusioned and wanted to leave IS and return to the UK – but had decided not to risk being captured and facing a “brutal” punishment from the terror group.
He told the programme the family were “devastated” and that it was a “great loss to us all”.
Kadiza Sultana and school friends Shamima Begum and Amira Abase, both 15 at the time, flew from Gatwick to Turkey on 17 February 2015 after telling their parents they were going out for the day.
The Bethnal Green Academy pupils later entered Syria and were thought to be living in Raqqa, a stronghold for the so-called Islamic State.
They had been studying for their GCSEs at the school in Tower Hamlets, east London – where they have been described as “straight-A students”.
Akunjee said Kadiza had expressed a desire to return.
He said: “The problem with that was the risk factors around leaving are quite terminal also, in that if IS were able to detect and capture you then their punishment is quite brutal for trying to leave.
“In the week where she was thinking of these issues a young Austrian girl had been caught trying to leave ISIS territory and was by all reports beaten to death publicly, so – given that that was circulated in the region as well as outside – I think Kadiza took that as a bad omen and decided not to take the risk.”
Akunjee added: “I think she found out pretty quickly that the propaganda doesn’t match up with the reality.”
Recordings of phone calls between Kadiza and her sister Halima, who is in the UK, were filmed by a freelance journalist for ITV.
In them, Kadiza said the man she had married had been killed, and that she wanted to return to the UK. She also said she “felt scared”.
She added: “You know if something goes wrong, that’s it. You know the borders are closed right now, so how am I going to get out?”
A fourth girl from the school is believed to have travelled to Syria in December 2014.
