German Girl, 16, Who Ran Away From Home to Join ISIS is Captured in Mosul

A schoolgirl, 16, who ran away from her home in Germany to join ISIS a year ago was just captured in Mosul — alongside some other women wearing suicide bomb vests.

Linda Wenzel, who’s home was Pulsnitz, near Dresden, was discovered among the ruins of Mosul after it fell from ISIS control to government forces. She was found with memberes of the all-female terror group’s policing force.

The Daily Mail has more:

She fled Germany a year ago by posing as her mother Catherine and flying from Frankfurt to Turkey, before making her way into Syria.

Police believe she had fallen in love with a Muslim man she met online who persuaded her to move to Syria to join him.

She was among 20 ISIS followers seized after Mosul fell following a ten month battle which left 25,000 Jihadists dead and Iraq’s second largest city destroyed.

She was caught in a tunnel system in Mosul with other women, some of whom wore suicide vests and had automatic weapons. Media reports said they worked for the ISIS police force in the city.

Among those detained were women from Russia, Turkey, Canada and Chechnya. All were seized during military mopping-up operations last Thursday.

German authorities had listed her as a potential terror suspect after her mother reported her missing, and it was learned she had fled to join ISIS.

She was radicalized in Germany and changed her name to Mariam.

The Daily Mail has more:

Linda was unhappy at home and turned to Islam and soon began engaging with ISIS followers in the Middle East on Internet chat rooms.

Her friends told police she had started learning Arabic, taking the Koran to school, wearing conservative clothing and becoming fascinated with Islam before her disappearance.

She was under the observation of German intelligence officials suspected of plotting a serious crime against the state when she fled abroad, where she fell in with ISIS offshoot groups before being smuggled into Iraq.

Before fleeing, Linda told her mother she was going to stay with friends but instead forged a letter pretending to be Catherine which allowed her to withdraw money from the bank.

She then used the counterfeit bank authorisation and her mother’s forged identification papers to buy the ticket to Istanbul.

When her mother noticed she was missing, the teenager had already flown to Turkey and vanished.

Linda’s mother said in July last year: ‘When she did not come back and then I found out she had never even been there, I called the police.

‘In her room they found a print of a plane ticket to Istanbul under the mattress. I was shocked, my daughter has never stolen or lied about anything before.

‘I am devastated by the fact that she was apparently completely brainwashed and persuaded to leave the country by someone and that she managed to hide it from me.’

Her classmate Jule, 16, had noticed her best friend change over time, and said: ‘More and more Linda shied away from the rest of us.

‘She suddenly dressed in long clothes, was learning Arabic and reading the Koran.’

The criminal police of the state of Saxony are heading an international search for the girl.

But state attorney Till Neumann, 54, admits that the whereabouts of the girls are still unknown.

Iraqi security forces recently ended three years of ISIS rule in the Iraqi city of Mosul and the terror group is under growing pressure in Raqqa, it’s de-facto capital in Syria.

Footage reportedly showing ISIS fighters crawling out of their tunnels to surrender to Iraqi counter-terror units after the city was reclaimed from jihadists.

The clip, uploaded to Twitter on Wednesday, appears to show wounded fighters, one using a pair of crutches, walking away from a destroyed building.