Appeal for families to come back from Syria

Two British fathers desperate after wives abscond with children

Two fathers whose wives are feared to have taken their nine children to Syria broke down as they begged their families to come home.

They are feared to be set to join IS. Khadija Dawood, 30, Sugra Dawood, 34, and their children, who are aged three to 15, went missing after going on an Islami pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia from their homes in Bradford, England.

Akhtar Iqbal, husband of Sugra Dawood, directly appealed to his family, saying: “All of you, I can’t live without you. Please, please come back home.”

In an emotional press conference, Mohammed Shoaib told wife Khadija Dawood: “We had a perfect relationship, we had a lovely family. Please contact me whenever you want. Please come back.”

Khadija, Sugra, and their sister Zohra Dawood, 33, disappeared after going on an Islamic pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia from their homes in Bradford, West Yorkshire.

Among those missing are Iqbal’s five children Ismaeel, three, Mariya, five, Zaynab, eight, Ibrahim, 14, and Junaid Ahmed, 15.

He said: “I would like to appeal to my family. To my wife Sugra and my sons Junaid, Ibrahim, Ismaeel, and my daughters Zaynab and Mariya.

“Please, please contact with me. Please, please call me. It’s been eight, nine days, you are out and we don’t know where you are.

“I miss you, I love you. All of you, I love you a lot. I can’t live without you.

“To my family, please, please call me [so] at least I know where you are, are you safe? Especially my three-year-old son Ismaeel.

Mohammed Shoaib, whose children five-year-old Muhammad Haseeb and Maryam Siddiqui, seven, are also missing, said: “Please come back home with the kids, I know the kids can’t live without me and you, please bring them home, they can’t live without me.

“We’ve been married 11 years, and we were in a perfect relationship, she knew it, please come back.”

The family’s lawyer, Balaal Khan, said he believed a police investigation into the women’s brother, who is thought to be in Syria, had begun before the family went missing.

When asked about the brother, Khan said: “It’s currently under investigation by the police, it would be inappropriate to comment.”

He added later: “I believe it is an ongoing investigation from before the family went missing.”

Khan would not rule out if the family had been under police surveillance before they travelled to Saudi Arabia.

Speaking earlier, Khan said: “We’ve had no answers whatsoever, we don’t know what’s happened.”

He said that the fathers last spoke to their children on June 8.

“The fathers are understandably quite distraught,” said Khan. “One can imagine, not seeing their children for three weeks or so.