Another Moscow student is suspected of joining ISIL

The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), one of Moscow’s largest universities, is currently looking for information on the whereabouts of second-year student Mariam Ismailova. According to media reports, she has left for Syria in an attempt to join the Islamic State.

Russian news channel LifeNews has reported that Mariam Ismailova left her Moscow apartment on the morning of June 12 and never returned home. She told her parents that morning that she was off to class. Ismailova’s father told LifeNews that his daughter, like her family members, was Muslim and wore a hijab, but had exhibited no radical tendencies.

The press office of RANEPA reports that Mariam Ismailova studied management and marketing. The press office has also stated that they are checking information on her departure from Russia and on her current grades at school.

“Right now we can only confirm that Mariam Ismailova is indeed in her second year of study at the Institute of Management and Marketing, with a focus on economics,” said the head of RANEPA’s press office Dmitry Sokolov.

Ismailova’s father also said that his family had discussed the story of Varvara Karaulova, a Moscow State University student who tried to join the Islamic State but was deported back to Russia after being arrested on the Turkey-Syria border. Varvara Karaulova was questioned by authorities in Moscow this week as a witness in a case about Islamic State recruitment.

Pavel Karaulov and his lawyer, Alexander Karabanov, believe Karaulova was recruited by professionally trained ISIL agents. Karabanov maintains that the recruiters operated “smoothly and efficiently,” and that Karaulova is not the only one to fall victim to their activities.

For more on how Varvara Karaulova disappeared, read ‘She was a straight-A student’: Missing Moscow girl recruited by ISIL, says her father