Jeddah: The Kingdom prevented three Saudi women and seven children from traveling through Lebanon to join the conflict in neighboring Syria, SPA reported on Friday.
The three sisters and their children were detained by Lebanese authorities in Beirut and flown back to the Kingdom on Thursday after the Saudi husband of one of the women told police they planned to join the war, SPA quoted Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki as saying.
He said the husband, who was the father of three of the children, had tipped them off on Monday that his wife had left and was a takfiri (deviant). The children were aged one to 10, he added.
He commended the cooperation of citizens and residents with the security agencies in reporting all suspicious people via the ministry’s newly established security reporting units. He pointed out that 70 percent of the ministry’s anti-terror efforts succeed due to the tip-offs from residents and citizens.
Authorities have organized for the children’s care while the women were referred to the courts. How the women left the Kingdom and their motives are being investigated.
The Kingdom’s close coordination with the Lebanese authorities made it possible to intercept the group. The government has sought to stop citizens from joining conflicts in foreign countries.
A former British spy chief said in December that Syria had become the pre-eminent global incubator for a new generation of militants after groups there more than doubled their recruitment of foreign fighters to as many as 31,000 over the past 18 months. Many of the foreign fighters flocking to Syria to join terror groups are from the Middle East and Africa, although terrorists have attracted fighters from across different countries ranging from Norway to Uzbekistan.