Authorities could have stopped a Sydney teenager who left home suddenly and is believed to be en route to Iraq to join the fighting, a lawyer for the boy's family says.
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Abdullah Elmir, 17, went missing from his home in Bankstown more than a week ago and called his mother to say he was in Turkey about to ''cross the border''.
The lawyer representing the family, Zali Burrows, said Abdullah's mother understood that to mean he was heading to Iraq.
He said she wanted to know how the teenager and a 16-year-old boy he was travelling with were not stopped and urged the government to bring him back. ''We know they have the intelligence to pinpoint him,'' she said. ''The concern is that he's being used as a tracking device to gather further intelligence, to see where he's actually going to go.''
Abdullah told his family he was going fishing on June 20, but is understood to have left the country.
ASIO said it was monitoring 150 citizens who had suspected links to ''violent extremist groups''.
