Member Since: 4/6/2010
Posts: 505
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Young Muslim Girl Goes Missing
Didn't think this was your typical case of a missing person. I was really sketched out.
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Asmaa Bana, a 20-year-old Toronto graphic design student, whose family says she is so conscientious that she will call if expecting to be even five minutes late, is missing.
She hasn’t been seen since friends left her at the Ontario College of Arts and Design on the fourth floor at about 1:30 p.m. Monday.
Bana had been online searching for a summer job and later told one of her friends she was excited about an interview she had that day.
When she did not return Monday night to her Rexdale home, where she lives with her family, they began to panic.
One of her sisters tried her cell phone, but it was switched off. “We thought, ‘Okay, maybe she’s just in an area where she can’t get service.”
Another sister tried to send a message on Facebook. But her Facebook profile was deactivated. They checked Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and the other social media profiles Bana so often used.
All her accounts were deactivated.
Had she wanted to disappear?
“You’re not in trouble, please come home,” her family said in a message to Asmaa on Wednesday morning, after Toronto Police issued a press release. “If anyone knows anything, please come forward.”
Every explanation — from the benign to the devastating — has run through the minds of Bana’s relatives, who immediately contacted police when they could not reach her.
One sister managed to get her cell phone record for Monday, which shows the phone was last used at 5:19 p.m. to call her voicemail. The call lasted a minute.
But the records show from 2 p.m. until that last call, there are repeated incoming calls from a cell phone in Barrie. Bana does not appear to answer the calls, but checks her voicemail after almost every missed call.
The Star found the identity of the caller, whose voice mail message said he works for the Ministry of Children and Youth Services, and tried to reach him by cellphone — which goes immediately to voice mail — and through Facebook and his office phone number.
None of the calls were returned.
However Bana’s sister, Ilham, called the Barrie number early Tuesday and spoke with a man briefly before he hung up.
There was another strange call that one of the Toronto detectives investigating the case mentioned to the family, Ilham said. It was on April 18 and only lasted one minute. The number is a cell phone in Pakistan, but her sisters say she doesn’t know anyone in Pakistan.
No one answered the number when called.
What is most strange about the case is erasing her online history.
Normally a missing 20-year-old does not warrant much attention from police but Toronto Detective Rob Elliott said deactivating her accounts is worrisome.
“That’s unusual for someone her age,” said Elliott Wednesday morning.
One scenario her family had worried about but thought unlikely was that an extremist group had tried to recruit her online, as the Islamic State has done with other Canadian youths.
Even though Bana’s relatives say she could be easily influenced, they all find it impossible to believe she would try to leave Canada or be lured by the group. She has never been outside of Ontario, and never owned a passport, unless she recently applied for one and did not tell her family.
“She does not have a political bone in her body,” say her sisters. “She barely keeps up with the news, she’s just trying to make her way through school.”
Detective Elliott said there is no indication of any involvement of any outside groups. The case has not been referred to the RCMP.
The apartment where Bana lives with her parents, five sisters and brother, was packed late Tuesday night. A steady stream of relatives came to comfort the family, hugging, crying. Pizzas were ordered, but few felt like eating.
Three of her sisters were huddled in one of the bedrooms, working like detectives to trace her movements.
“I went through her bed, reached into all the nooks and crannies to see if she has a diary, or any notes tucked away,” said one. “I’m not concerned right now about privacy. I looked for pamphlets of events maybe she went to, went through all the pockets of her clothes, her bags, purses, maybe there was something she was hiding.”
Nothing.
Bana left her home Monday at 7 a.m., with the common refrain of her mother telling her to eat breakfast and Bana leaving without a meal. She took her phone, Canon camera, laptop and charges. That was what she usually packed for school. But the fact that she left so early, in hindsight now, seems strange.
“She said exams were done so it would be odd for her to leave that early. She had such a hectic semester, any student would want to take advantage of this time to recover from sleep deprivation.”
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http://www.thestar.com/news/world/20...s-missing.html
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