FILE - In this Thursday, May 23, 2013 file photo, the Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police Bernard Hogan-Howe leaves 10 Downing Street in London. British police on Monday, March 16, 2015, arrested an 18-year-old suspected of planning to travel to join Islamic State militants in Syria, hours after three other U.K. teens detained in Turkey were released on bail. The arrests are signs of increasingly strenuous efforts by police to stop the flow of radicalized young Britons to the Middle East. Detectives have been criticized for failing to prevent three 15- and 16-year-old London girls from making the same journey last month. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe has said the girls would not be charged with terrorism offenses if they came home. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, File) (The Associated Press)
LONDON – British police have released three teens on bail after their arrest for trying to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State group.
The families of the boys — two 17-year-olds and one 19-year-old — alerted authorities when the teens failed to return from Friday prayers. Police alerted Turkish authorities, who intercepted the teens and returned them to Britain.
Police arrested the teens on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts. They were bailed late Sunday.
Their arrests come just weeks after an international search began for three teenage girls who left Britain and traveled to Syria to become so-called "jihadi brides."
Scotland Yard believes some 600 Britons have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join IS since the start of the conflict.