let's get your mother now of our top stories this hour thousands of asylum seekers remain stranded at the turkish greek order after turkey gave them the green light to try to enter europe the leaders of turkey and russia are said to me today to seek a solution to the escalating fighting in northern syria. coming up we have our documentary doc film with the story of a father who lost his daughter to so-called islamic state i'm brian thomas with the entire team thanks for joining. us. to go beyond. that. we're all about the stories that matter to. us. whatever it takes. to not running down. public things but not that.

you made for mines. hi dad it's me there's no future press here i don't have one single dollar. is it there's a smuggler who got 10 women at a fair yesterday without any problems. just so it shatters any illusions you might share with. your own child would rather go join the terrorists than stay with you. and even think it's cool for some coup.

once and then i thought i was young i guess and want to die but ever evolution as mammals sort of in. this film tells the story of a father i accompanied over a period of 4 years and his daughter. for one 3rd of it's clear to us that she's not only some little girl who was groomed me to hang in there i loved it unfold around spot sure i was lying on a phone from the results of the perpetrators on. the story of 2 vastly different worlds. it was to get out of there as quickly as you can of. the story of life and death the sad driving i'm waiting please dad please. in march 2015 mike messing's world was turned upside down his daughter had suddenly disappeared without a trace he then started receiving messages on his phone from

a stranger. was a mere 3 months i couldn't understand what he was telling me to walk. but when i saw that tiny the profile photo and the clicked on it looked horrible for your well deserved and then saw that flag. that was like final. his daughter leonora was 15 years old at the time her parents had separated some years earlier mike who runs a bakery in a small town in eastern germany had recently remarried was that the reason for leonora's disappearance had she felt like

a 3rd wheel mike didn't know. to those around her she had seemed like a typical teenager interested in boys and beauty products desperate for clues to help make sense of it all mike searched leonora's room he found her diary and was confronted with a parallel existence one dominated by islam and in which his daughter was wearing a headscarf. he found photos on her computer which showed her hidden transformation. mike hadn't noticed a thing and blamed himself. for is that you keep coming back to yourself and ask why for what prophet or for why or more for for what is or. young girls in germany have been systematically recruited by

a supporters are searching social media for potential targets event after girls are often married off while they're still minus and push to produce new fighters if they fall out of favor they become slaves so why are girls and young women from across europe choosing to go and live in this darkness scene. for an agonizing 12 days mike heard nothing from leonora then finally he received a voice message little did the father know that soon he would be keeping his phone by his side at all times it would become the sole source of contact with his daughter. hi dad i'm trying to send you a voice memo that reaches you quickly. i'm doing really well we have a really big apartment here. that is that is decorated everything in purple of course we have you know we don't have couches here but these pillows you sit on. i'm also send you photos of the president he gave me gold. nora was talking about

how wedding aged just 15 she married an islamic state fighter this is the official wedding photo she was one of the man's 3 wives mike's layo was now living in another world in syria in the midst of a civil war. the previous world had been biking by a village of 200 people in the hearts mountains region of eastern germany. at this point mike approached me. i'm a journalist and already had years of on the ground experience covering i-s. and had been to syria and iraq often we immediately had a good report but at that 1st meeting in 2015 we had little idea of how often we would speak and meet over the next years and every time we met one big question loomed why is our concern for the mosque and she shut us out she left us without

any opportunity to be part of her life. she was a girl who went voluntarily to syria go. and welcome to the talk show 2 and a half years after the u.s. withdrawal iraq is at risk of being plunged into chaos also here are a mass safe distance we might pinch also says to the pace at which a few 1000 jihadists a terrorizing an entire country designing their militias are over running around one 3rd of iraq and syria and setting up a ruthless regime of terror. and somewhere in the south declared caliphates was leonora gushing with pride over her husband. who went by the name of me heard. me heard it was born martin lemon and was a welder in a mine in germany before joining us where he reportedly came to hold a senior position in i asked intelligence

a fellow german i asked recruit would later testify that instead of torturing people himself had others do it for him leonora was getting acquainted with her new home rocca the capital of the i asked califf it she texted her dad about what she'd seen. us how to ask us. the roundabout was right outside leonora's home. i s. used such violent images as propaganda on the internet in order to recruit new people and intimidate opponents. in the weeks after leonora disappeared the police were informed and visited mike's home where they seized his daughter's computer. but there was little they could do. yet mike is heading to berlin to

a counseling center called high out arabic for life it was set up to help families whose children have signed up to islamist groups. there he met dozens of families in a similarly desperate situation the center's director cloudier dunn advised parents to talk to their children about everyday things in the hope that they'll get homesick. the fifty's and the crucial thing is that you realize you're not alone because you're not the only idiot in germany whose daughter is run away nor appeared unaware of exactly what kind of place she was now living in me and i asked in rocca laws and punishment what draconian the listening to western music was punished with a whipping only laura and her fellow wives manage to have their own little parties in secret. leonora soon began to lose faith and i asked she found her husband disgusting i asked brutal and was unhappy

to be one of 3 wives i thought 5 more not after around 2 months she seemed to realize for the 1st time that this wasn't everything she hoped for. but other than she admitted as much i said she wanted to come home. and wanted us to help her. and it was good and then it helps if you know people who know other people and. the people mike was referring to was our team we knew the other people smugglers some of whom had close ties to i.a.s. at 1st we want unsure whether journalists should get involved in such a way but after a lengthy discussions we decided we would but under the condition that mike alone would take all decisions our team would accompany him merely as observers a meeting was arranged in turkey when mike arrived we were already there.

smuggling people out of i asked territory was extremely dangerous especially when a woman was involved. mike met the smuggler in a hotel in southern turkey we kept our distance while listening in mike to the negotiating. with her. i met with this was a smartly dressed guy. he said he had links to the nusra front. so basically. the highest. miko's pods or mike from the hamlet of pride and bach was having a cup of tea with 2 guys from al-qaeda i think of the smoking around 100 cigarettes . when you're incredibly tense or just like you're talking through interpreters. the smugglers set out a complex secret operation involving 3 cars and forged documents. mike was tempted

to give them the go ahead straight away i want my kid back. it was kind of that means that afterwards i face prosecution for giving money to a terrorist organization i'd be happy to go to jail as long as my child is back home can deal with that go ahead somewhere in syria a group of men set out for rucka they had already smuggled people out of what was now the capital of i asked. that plan to get leonora was potentially a matter of life or death. because rocca the heart of i ask was teeming with militias patrolling the city seemingly at every street corner. shops or even often i asked her concretely whether she was up to it just said in her typically casual way sure no problem. leonora sent her father a current location and photos of the surrounding area if a court doing this by asked she could be sentenced to death. the what that was the

plan. to fake up alone or in a car where she would travel with a cover family as their daughter but. there were repeated problems coordinating a pick up with each failure the danger rose. where are they i'm waiting i know it is here please dad please get it to put. around a dozen such attempts failed to work out. the ever thought i was there was an hour or an hour and a half each day that were just crushing your nerves having to get the questions rightly repeating answers correctly it was nerve wracking you're so wound up sorry to put into words. but they decided not to give up.

from. the bowl. of us that was the last thing we heard or read from her directly. then silence for days there wasn't a single word from leonora instead they heard from her husband had. not invoked we were really afraid for lay off with calm kind of madam and then we didn't hear anything nothing for over

a week if you want to go on that one issue. event the 2nd wife of martin alias nihad got in touch. back in brighton boss mike and the rest of the family needed time before they could start believing the news. slowly it sank in that leonora was dead that she had been killed in a civil war that wasn't hers. 3 weeks after the news of her death we visited mike for the 1st time with the camera again . he told us he was trying to somehow get through the days that he hadn't made it

through a 90 at without or trying. thank you distort your child to stand. up. and if you fail to shove you failed to get her out of there and she shoved your sword. we have vented bomford on a plant this tree thought we were preparing her but will be saying farewell to a child. when you have a place we can go which is symbolically her last resting place and when. we took stock of the last few months going over everything again and again. the family organized a memorial service so that everyone could say goodbye then suddenly a message arrived.

but it wasn't really her my couldn't be sure so he asked questions to which only leonora would know the answers what had best childhood friends home looked like inside the names of her grandfather's ponies. the answers that were correct leonora was alive. even if she was still living under a terrorist regime islamiyah arabic for islamic state. and he was a taller man or woman young or old and. even slightly toying with the idea of going off to a doctor in the. desert i should be aware of what they're doing and.

this is as good they're making their family go through hell. for leonora's family that held continued every day every week every month mike was haunted by the question of how his daughter was and whether he would ever see her again in winter 20152016 in syria people were being killed on a daily basis on all sides. have. mancow minister cannot for right now there is nothing we can do just wait with a gun because an issue of you were getting experienced in this. not giving up is the most important thing. sometimes you have lows. you have to

carry on. but mike was permanently on edge the constant flow of messages in use was like being on a hamster wheel that never stopped spinning. leonora contacted him reported that her husband me had now had a slave a woman he bought. some to me had came home yesterday sometime after midnight and said sorry bought myself a slave for $800.00 when i was like $100.00 is nothing it's how can somebody do that comes from a human being it's she's a has eighty's 30 years old and has 2 children so i don't know what to say. let's just so sorry for her arms her blue no idea what they did not treat her well at all she's really starting from muscle x. there are the hordes of mass executions of women and girls being raped and sold into prostitution and of children being forcibly recruited for fighting for title

it seems the displacement of these c.d.'s is deliberate people who are not children slave to driven out of their villages with no water or food. that's what i said i 1st thought was this poor woman of 3 plus years 2 kids at the complete mercy of a dangerous man. how can a person change like that because the question keeps bothering me all the mission shifted that he's grown up here and probably happily he went to kindergarten and high school a normal civilized person wouldn't buy himself a slave. i'm so shocked. i want to help her and it's like i want her to at least have a few ok days that's had a. chance i'm sorry thank god. the woman was called la mia she wouldn't be an issue for leonora for very long because soon after this photo was used to offer her for sale back to her family. one year later in

2016 i drove to northern iraq i-s. free territory. i had found refuge in a displaced persons camp here by being looking for her for months. i cautiously stepped into the room me i was still severely traumatized. we communicated with the help of an interpreter. nobody could say how many men had literally owned her she was barely able to talk. after a while i showed her a photo of leonora's husband. how did he buy her. liver. does she remember his name.

with us how did he treat or on the phone so the. we then left alone for the entire time we were there the children likewise barely said a word llambias husband was still missing she was living in her brother in law's tent. the family had to raise $24000.00 to secure her release money they didn't have. it would spend another 3 years in this kurdish tent city since 2019 she and her children have been living in safety in canada and we've been told she's doing a little better. suddenly last night fighters began advancing on the terrace militia's unofficial capital back out for. air raids on rocker in the autumn of

2017. a short time later leonora left a rocker and i asked lost control over the city. when mike heard the news he feared the worst for his daughter as so often before. is it still you're sitting or you can't do anything. you feel completely powerless . to try to distract yourself and not think about it too much and if through fear that will because there's nothing you can do. what you just have to accept things as they come. in the.

meanwhile leonora was carrying on with her life she posted m o g celebrating her 3rd week of pregnancy. while leonora was still somewhere in syria i traveled to the liberated city of raka now little more than a wasteland of ruins and rubble i found the apartment where she used to live. it up in the mouth when she posted photos from morocco back then i spent ages searching the internet to find out exactly which building she was in. this was what was left of the stairwell leading to her apartment. leonora spent several months here and evidently made herself at home while just out

on the streets people were being locked in cages and i asked was publicly torturing and murdering. leonora and other i asked divo ts we're now on the run and being hunted down by the international coalition led by the united states. 2017. she was probably somewhere in the vicinity of the euphrates river in eastern syria

. while my continued to keep his bakery running leonora was trying to find a people smuggler to get her to turkey and out of the war. there is the smuggler who got 10 women out of her yesterday without any problems. ok ok use that chance get out of there as quickly as you can. come and then the day actually arrived when they said they were setting off was. coming my dad it's me leo i'm at the wing point i'm praying to allah that was each other soon ok the spaniards and a few minutes time i'll be offline a. month on a choice. like i'm pretty anxious of you but i guess it has to work out.

how much data stay strong don't cry. don't come and then there were no more messages that maybe they really had set off. and then our smuggler of choice contacted me. and he started this horrible. really nasty she says well game is the wrong warning those things he said there are loads of checkpoints we're having to bribe so many people so we need more money you can write back a 100 times i haven't got any more he happens to be on. the ground so i built up this unbelievable pressure so what can you do. you won't go around in circles going out. your mind. is focused and you know. that even drinking helps you know. with your complete wreck because you know the

next message they send could be. well i think good as the booth going to. come in gotten me to the eventually they had me so desperate that i said fine i'm actually going to have to transfer the $8000.00 he won so that they at least stay alive. but they weren't even able to tell me where to wire it to because of the moves i do not know whether you realize these guys really have to be nuts and you're just helpless. and if it was.

that's all it was so tough i thought those few days were worse than the 4 years before that. it's difficult to describe that with you in your mind you're up on the ladder and the newest as above you vegas is just too much it's not possible to do because not reach a point where you just can't take it anymore i can't do this to anyone anymore or it would be me it's so bad that you want to give up through i give yourself up and it was all because you want an end to this misery and if i no longer alive then ok maybe leo will also die but then my family will have peace. and they miss the point you reach so i actually block out the number. i just couldn't go on. who could fix it for. what i should hold myself i wouldn't cry today this is i'm

going to rope. it was one of our darkest hours because the words written. he severed contact knowing leonora might die. the mental strain from mike and his family back home and cry it's simply too big. for us going next day or the day after i don't remember exactly leo contacted me it didn't work out we didn't even leave both through this how do you not just keel over. in autumn 2018 leonora was still on the run with her husband me what with the war still raging around them she had a 2nd child maria also born prematurely. air raids artillery and ground offensives

that seem islamic state reduced to islamic village. hi dad its me live you were in the last religious left we're surrounded we're on the only street that islamic state still controls itself are things. i don't need for living on top of each other starving children are freezing to death. we are there no more going to get out there's no future for us here we don't have one single dollar bag and seeing us we have absolutely nothing and often have nothing to eat we've decided to give ourselves up. want to go soon will be b. b. . with the federal government the radio syria was back on the air if you want. after 4 years you build up your own protective armor.

it was a voice message from. didn't sound too happy. to talk to the government i'm willing to do anything and i was never a soldier i never killed anyone i'm willing to pass on any information i have. no there are trials in germany and i'm willing to help the government. it's important for us that the women and children arrive home in good health. i don't want to stay in a jail here in syria i have no problem going to jail in germany and serving my sentence there. i'm really afraid so. i don't want to get beaten up the whole time i have a heart condition and picked up an ammonia here we're all really sex and. so the same man who tried to ruin your life 4 years ago is suddenly saying poor me. and please don't tell anyone about this message if someone here finds out that we

want to get out we might end up getting killed in the recent version of the movie to go. take a long plenty to drink just get out of there and take care of yourself. in any 2900 more than 40000 people in the last enclave i ask surrendered. in germany all my could do was wait for leonora to make it out on january 31st 2019 that wait was finally over. hi dad it's me leo just want to say that i've left i-s. we're all really happy that we made it. a had was picked up by the americans but all fine they've been really really good to us. even though i got up as usual at 130 quarter to 2 more the same as usual check my phone and sawed mr whole lot of calls and what messages the friends had recognized the young woman in this video

footage as leonora agency reporters had met her in the desert. because i wanted my my old life back a long time ago and now i know the. aftermath all but i was on my way to work. well we've come and then it finally went click. the can you go back over the last 4 years for you there were incredible amount of images going through your mind i thought if you look if you need a lot of things you suppressed negative stuff to your wife noticed and you cry a little bit as well of course and it's only then that you realize how much pressure you've been under because it became your daily life so you didn't really even register at all to suddenly be 5 you feel yourself getting lighter and lighter and free and i got out of my car and i thought yes very often it's over.

they can't you anymore. leonora was detained in this camp a tent city outside i'll hole in the oven syria together with 70000 others in a fierce debate erupted in germany over whether the country should take back those who'd gone to join i-s. didn't they pose a threat. we returned to syria in march 21000 it had been 4 years since leonora had run away from home i wanted to finally meta. in from her online chats be shooting the ones she last posted you sometimes get the impression that despite how long it's been at how much older she's become she still has this 90 about her and you wonder how that's possible she decided. to forget it to me but it's not she's not 19 and she's been through such

a loss she's been in a war being bombed out of our home seen all this awful violence and is still so naive and really interesting to see how she is in person that really her just mind off like the night before while i was about to meet leonora mike in germany was looking forward to his daughter finally returning home although he did have doubts as the saudis are not really sure who will be welcoming our. 4 year. there's a bias and propaganda have to have a look at this and for that she was really young once you have to tell you she was a deuced sure before but she was happy to be seduced on the phone that's also part of the truth of order to. leonora a willing accomplice. had she now realized what she had done to her family and to people in syria and ultimately to herself too i wanted to know everything including what it was that made islamic state so appealing to her. islam.

islam was sort of in a lot of people in germany are converting to islam and britain to. face and i ended up in this facebook group and i think i was young i guess and i wanted a bit of revolution i was in take stream stuff. maybe i was a coward because i ran away from home and thought this is the way to solve all my problems in one go. she told us she had distanced herself from i guess a long time ago but how did she feel about the things she had done had she really thought about the past 4 years had she confronted her deeds. everything changed their marriage wasn't the same life in general in syria was not for me i was no longer happy with my life. there were also a lot of problems within the family there and i just wanted to go home and i went to that failed things got worse because i understood that i now had to live there

whether i wanted to or not. because i try to escape once my own husband. this is her husband me her w.r.c. a born martin lemon. german prosecutors are preparing a case against him and her issued an arrest warrant. when we met it seems he was hoping for pity. from germany. it's tough you're. under huge mental strain i mean a one man cell i don't see or hear anything. he told us he only worked in the technical department of i guess intelligence but he never fought never murdered or tortured anyone nor ordered anyone to he insisted he was merely a peripheral figure despite having had a slave why did you buy

a sleigh. if. i was exonerated we shouldn't be talking without my lawyer. but i haven't done anything bad. and she was in very poor health and we helped her but i never talked to her. but why did you buy a human being with 2 children only days off the thing is she was doing really badly . and in islam you're rewarded for treating a slave well because ladies have rights. and going to understand he said he's come to question. is this woman was really ill but as i said we helped her where we could. and i had no other intentions i already had a big family of course if we wanted to make money by her cheap to fatten her. look if you want to provoke me no that's not true no no i don't need that money

just. bought her an order to trade her. we had money problems all the time oh so martin bought her to make money. only to make some money he said that in her up nurse her have her take a shower and give her kids food make sure that you put some weight so she's worth something. like a flattened car right must. leonora's account incriminated her husband but what about her own row german prosecutors are looking into pressing charges against leonora who's now 19 like her husband she suspected of having spied for islamic state intelligence and having supported a terrorist organization. do you ever work for the secret police or pass on information to your husband. i heard that too it's just ridiculous. whether she committed a crime will be decided in the german courts in the eyes of her father she needs to

face up to her moral responsibility for having joined a terrorist group. 130 was that she's not only some little girl who was groomed. is just as much a perpetrator you just have to face the reality is the 3rd one. leonora seemed carefree as she talked is she naive or traumatized it was hard to tell she doesn't seem to have reflected on how her family were fairing kurdish intelligence officers then told us our time was up. thank you for coming thanks. leonora gave interviews to other reporters as well and recited passages from the. oran. it seems she gave little thought to what impression this would make on people back home in her village. to myself most people will say she's fully veiled and singing muslim songs although it's not

a song so it is. a has learned nothing b. doesn't belong here and see she's dangerous. perhaps it would be more prudent for leonora to stay in a neighboring village away from the media frenzy expected to descend on pike. and there indeed appears to be a solution mike and cloudier done shit from the palin counseling center met pastor marcus bloomer who's a friend of mike. who they thought was going to go this is ya'll a look at all the take a little look around the place is going through gone ah well that's great the pastor knows how people in the area finke and he has experience dealing with individuals whose lives have gone through dramatic changes. the 1st thing we want is for them to have contact with their families and been the one from the apollo. land to give leonora a place where she'll feel at home and safe with her children while still being

independent. the german government still has to decide if and when leonora may come home. will see. omens and off fall and as she does have to go to jail even for a reason. to feel she's definitely going for a beer and a schnitzel with me like an oath of allegiance. to. desperate people. sam elise overcome by fear and distrust. dramatic pictures from the greek turkish border. once again refugees are caught between competing political interests. seems to recall the migrant crisis of the 20 cysteine.

these people lost all hope some good. 90 minutes on t.w. . i'm not laughing at the gym i guess sometimes i am but i stand up and wait for them and me thinks deep into the german culture of looking at the stereotypes of the classics the indians think you see for the country that i'm playing the piano needed change will take from this drama day out to eat it's all about ok bob i might show join me to meet the gentleman from d.w. post is the schumann race destroying itself. we are ruining the basic elements of our system we're using too much water and we're polluting the water supply for the i'm. going to play golem or supplies will last forever but they

won't come up when the rain stops and starts march 20th on w. . cut. cut . play . this is the news coming to you live from burning in between the high. hope and hopelessness refugees and migrants stranded on the border to europe amidst a standoff between the e.u. and to a few who should take responsibility for their report live from the border where the crisis is unfolding also coming up spy ring violence in syria's italy

province we'll talk to the agenda of talks between the presidents of turkey and russia today as the region to lean out.