LONDON — To her family, Aqsa Mahmood was an intelligent and popular teenager who helped care for her three younger siblings and her grandparents at her home in Scotland. She listened to Coldplay, read Harry Potter novels and drank Irn Bru, a Scottish soft drink.
Though she aspired to be a pharmacist or a doctor, she left home in November 2013 to go to Syria and the authorities now say she is one of the most active recruiters of young British women to join the Islamic State.
The authorities are investigating possible links between Ms. Mahmood, who goes by the name Umm Layth (meaning Mother of the Lion), and the disappearance last week of three teenagers from London. They, too, are believed to have traveled to Syria to join the terrorist group also known as ISIS or ISIL.
The apparent trend of studious, seemingly driven young women leaving home to join violent jihadists has become disturbingly familiar.
A Metropolitan Police official said on Monday that one of the girls, Shamima Begum, sent a Twitter message to a woman on Feb. 15, a couple of days before they left Britain, but declined to disclose her name.
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The families of the three missing London teenagers have criticized security services in Britain for failing to intervene to stop their daughters from fleeing to Syria, even though they were monitoring Ms. Mahmood’s online activity.
After she left home more than a year ago, Ms. Mahmood phoned her parents from the Turkish border, telling them she would next see them on “Judgment Day” and take them to heaven, holding their hands. But British security services advised her parents to keep their daughter’s disappearance “under the radar,” Mr. Anwar said.
“Had the security services really been concerned about Aqsa Mahmood’s welfare, they would have moved heaven and earth to get her back in November 2013,” he said.
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