ITV News exclusive: Police gave Bradford family permission to leave UK
A British family of 12 who travelled to Syria to join so-called Islamic State, had been cleared to go abroad by senior police officers - 10 weeks before their trip.
Three sisters, Khadija Dawood, 30, Sugra Dawood, 34, and Zohra Dawood, 33, flew to Saudi Arabia with their nine children for a pilgrimage last month. They are thought to have then travelled to Syria to live under IS.
But ITV News has learned that the Dawoods were given authority to leave Britain by an officer from West Yorkshire Police after the women complained that they were prevented from travelling to Saudi Arabia in March.
Because their brother, 21-year-old Ahmed Dawood, was already in Syria, the travelling sisters were questioned by officers at Manchester Airport under the Terrorism Act 2000.
The delays caused by the extra security checks forced them to miss their flight. The following day, the women sought written permission from the police to smooth their way to the Middle East in the future.
A Detective Constable from West Yorkshire Police wrote back, providing them with a letter to reassure travel agents about their future trips.
In it, the officer refers to the Dawood's questioning by Greater Manchester officers in March:
The Dawood family would not comment on the letter, but their lawyer said, simply: “I hope that the police deal with this investigation with due diligence and expedition."
Two of the women’s husbands have previously claimed that the sisters were slowly radicalised during a police investigation into their brother.
They say officers had encouraged them to maintain contact with him over the internet to try to draw out information about ISIL.
So, was this a police failure? Can they be blamed for not preventing the Dawood sisters from taking their children into Syria?
Our letter certainly confirms that the women were in touch with the police before they vanished - and that officers were aware of their intention to travel abroad.
The sisters appear to have been familiar enough with detectives to get the green-light for future travel just a few hours after missing their flight.
But officers can’t watch every sibling or partner of every jihadist - even if they are identified as being at increased risk from radicalisation themselves.
In investigating cases like Ahmed Dawood’s, they must balance the risks of exposing their relatives to online extremism themselves against the rewards of information they might be able to gather.
These are tough calls for counter terrorism officers. Sometimes, of course, they get them wrong.
A West Yorkshire police spokesman told ITV News: "It was a letter sent to the travel agents just to confirm that there were no travel restrictions in place at that time."