Dawood family terrorist cell

The Dawood family were thirteen members of the same British Pakistani family who left the United Kingdom and disappeared, reportedly to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria. First to leave was Ahmed Dawood. He had been fighting with ISIL in the Syrian civil war for over a year when his three older sisters and their nine children left their homes in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England together to join him in May 2015.

The Dawood siblings were Ahmed, who was 21 in 2015, and his sisters Sugra, 34, Zohra, 33, and Khadija, 30. Sugra took her five children, aged 15, 14, 8, 5, and 3. Zohra took her daughters, aged 8, and 5. Khadija took her two children, aged 7, and 5. The women left their husbands behind. The Dawood parents are Pashtun and the family practiced a conservative form of Islam.

Zohra and her brother Ahmed were particularly close to one another, and Zohra was upset after his departure for Syria in 2013 or 2014. Sugra reportedly kept in touch with Ahmed over Skype. The sisters' husbands later suggested that by encouraging contact with Ahmed, the police had been "complicit in the grooming and radicalizing of the women."

Zohra was in an arranged marriage with her first cousin from Pakistan. and Quran classes were hosted in the couple's home.

Zohra and her husband separated in the autumn of 2014. One created a website a few years before leaving, called "An 11-year-old’s point of view about Islam". He and his older brother both had Facebook accounts.

The women went to the police and complained that they had been prevented from flying, and sought written permission to leave Britain. A detective constable from the West Yorkshire Police wrote a letter for them, saying, "I can confirm the passengers do not have any restrictions on their movements out of or into the United Kingdom." The letter said they had been questioned by Greater Manchester Police "due to an ongoing Police investigation into a separate person" meaning Ahmed Dawood.

The sisters and their children left for Saudi Arabia on 28 May and this time they were able to fly. A lawyer representing the two husbands said they were "normal people" who had had "no inkling" of their wives' plans. Zohra's estranged husband in Pakistan said he was "shocked" by what had happened. There did not appear to be any links between the Ameen family and the Dawood family. In January 2016, the police launched a fresh appeal for information as to the whereabouts of both the Dawood family and the Ameen family.

Fate of the family Sugra's second-oldest son continued to post on his Facebook account after his arrival in Syria, including a photo of himself dressed in combat gear and holding an AK-47. He also posted tributes to his uncle Ahmed and to his older brother, with the phrase "May Allah accept them." This is a common Islamic prayer for the dead, which suggests both Ahmed and Ahmed's nephew had been killed by that point.

The boy's Facebook page was later taken down.