Turkey detains suspect who may have helped U.K. teens join ISIS

A foreign intelligence operative suspected of helping three British schoolgirls join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria group has been detained, Turkey's foreign minister said Thursday.

Mevlut Cavusoglu said the suspect acted even though he or she worked for the intelligence agency of a country that is part of the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS. Cavusoglu didn't identify the country, but said it wasn't the U.S. or a European Union member.

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Some Turkish media accounts suggested the detained person may have been a Canadian citizen or from Canada. CBC News has confirmed this is not the case. The suspected individual is neither a Canadian citizen nor a Canadian Security Intelligence Service employee, CBC News has learned.

However, a European security source confirmed to Reuters that the person in question did have a link to CSIS.

Reuters also spoke with a Canadian government source in Ottawa who said the person was not a Canadian citizen and was not employed by CSIS. The source did not respond when asked whether the person had been working for CSIS, Reuters reports.

Steven Blaney, the minister of public safety and emergency preparedness, faced questions about Canada's alleged connection in question period on Thursday.

Blaney replied that he does not comment on operational matters, and he played up the Conservative government's Bill C-51, which would give CSIS more powers and allow police to make preventive arrests in the name of national security.

Suspect detained for more than 1 week

Cavusoglu, who was interviewed on A Haber television, said he had shared the information with his British counterpart.

"Do you know who the person who helped the girls turned out to be?" Cavusoglu said. "Someone who works for the intelligence service of a country that is part of the coalition."

He didn't provide further details on the suspect's detention.

A Turkish government official told The Associated Press that the suspect has been detained for more than a week. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of rules that bar officials from speaking to journalists without prior authorization.

In London, the Foreign Office said it was aware that an arrest had been made by Turkish police and said the girls' families had been informed.

It said it was in close co-operation with the Turkish authorities and that Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond was in regular contact with Cavusoglu.

"As soon as the U.K. received this information it was acted upon appropriately," the Foreign Office added, without elaborating.

The three girls — identified by British authorities as Shamima Begum, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15 — travelled from the U.K. to Turkey last month, from where they are believed to have crossed into Syria. Their journey highlighted the difficulty of halting the radicalization of young Muslims.

There has been tension between Turkey and Britain over who was to blame for the teenagers being able to sneak into Syria to join the extremist group, with Turkey accusing Britain of failing to notify authorities in time to prevent them from crossing the border. The girls had boarded a flight for Istanbul on Feb. 17.

Earlier this month, a Turkish television station obtained video showing the teenagers at an Istanbul bus terminal before they boarded a bus to a city near Turkey's border with Syria.