A Muslim father from the Denver area whose daughter tried to travel to Syria and join ISIS is warning other families to watch out for the terror organization's lure.
"They told them how to do it. How to get from home, how to get to the airport, how even to get the money," said the father, who is not being identified. "I believe they have a plan, especially [for] minors, to escape their families. ... I believe they taught them this plan: how to get to the airport, how to do this, how to do that, how to answer questions if you are being asked."
The father was interviewed by reporter Tony Kovaleski for The Denver Channel.
He explained his daughter and two friends were in contact with ISIS over the Internet and were lured into what could have become a tragedy.
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CNN reported at the end of 2015 how the three teenagers set out from a Denver suburb.
Their parents, alarmed when they vanished from a school bus route, checked the teens' cell phone activity and discovered calls to the German airline Lufthansa. The parents then called the FBI, which arranged for the girls to be intercepted when they landed in Germany. They were returned almost immediately.
The girls are two sisters of Somali descent and a friend whose family hails from Sudan.
Authorities reported at the time the girls apparently stole money from their parents for the trip.
The father told Kovaleski he had tried to stay involved in his daughter's life, yet she was lured anyway.
"ISIS plays on Muslims' emotions," the father said. "They play on the [idea] that you are living in a country where people are going to go to hell. Your parents, since they are living there, they are the same like these other people, even if your parents are Muslim. And you need to save yourself. How am I going to save myself? You need to come over here ... live under Islamic rule. We're going to give you a house, you're going to get married. You're going to get to have nice kids, have a nice life ... and it's a noble cause.
"But all that's wrong. All that's wrong," he told The Denver Channel. "There is no safe place there. People are all on the run. There's always fighting going on somewhere. There's no houses, there's no nice life. There are just a bunch of terrorists. And for these females to get there, they're just going to get raped, get killed."
He said parents should watch for signs.
"Every parent should not think, 'I'm safe and this is never going to happen to me.' That's wrong. If it happened to me, it can happen to anybody else, because I consider myself a good parent. I consider myself involved in my kids' lives. And that happened to me. And honestly, I want people to think it can happen to them. I want people to think about their kids, their activity on the Internet, their friends, all their kid's life. They should get more involved and think more about their kids and just get close to them, and answer their questions. Especially for Muslim people, if your kids have questions like 'Why do we live over here? We should go there,' you should have a good answer for that."
The father, who did not want the station to reveal his name, said: "This is my little daughter going to join ISIS. That's just the worst thing you can think about."