The mother of British-born Islamist ‘Jihadi Jack’ has said she has ‘guilty thoughts’ about whether her ‘liberal’ parentage and ‘chaotic’ childhood led to her fleeing to Syria to become a ‘self-proclaimed enemy of England’.
In the autobiography, Sally Lane, 60, wrote that she wondered if her “more liberal” parenting style had influenced her sons’ decision to travel to the Middle East to join ISIS.
Letts, now 28, fought for British and Canadian citizenship and grew up in Oxfordshire. He fled to Syria as a teenager in 2014, using money his parents gave him to visit a friend in Jordan.
He reportedly told his parents he intended to learn Arabic and study the Qur’an during a three-month trip to Kuwait, but joined ISIS in Raqqa.
After being captured by Kurdish authorities in 2017, he pleaded to be allowed to return to the UK, but the Home Office tore up his British passport in 2019, making him the responsibility of the Canadian government.
Sally Lane (pictured with young Jack Letts), the mother of British-born Islamist ‘Jihadi Jack’, has said she has “guilty thoughts” about whether her “chaotic” childhood led to her becoming a British self-proclaimed “enemy”. ‘
In the autobiography, Sally Lane, 60, wrote that she wondered if her “more liberal” upbringing influenced Jack Letts’ decision to travel to the Middle East to join ISIS.
Letts, now 28, fought for British and Canadian citizenship and grew up in Oxfordshire. He fled to Syria in 2014 as a teenager
Since then, he remains in a Kurdish prison in Syria.
In her memoir, Reasonable Reason to Suspicion, Ms Lane explains that her son’s tutors were concerned about his bad behavior at college, adding that she wondered if she was to blame for not “keeping a firm enough hand with him”, according to The Times :
Explaining his “self-incrimination”, he said he regretted that Letts had been with the landlords when he was young, adding that they had lived with “an aggressive heroin addict whose friends regularly robbed the place”.
She also describes the guilt she felt for not taking her son’s OCD “seriously enough” and that he was perhaps “given too much freedom at an early age” to grow up thinking he could “change the world.”
He added: “He was probably traumatized when his father and I separated for a few years when he was three, and he spent his formative years in a chaotic household.
‘Over and over again I delved into all the instances in his childhood where I could have been better or done differently.
“I lived all these sinful thoughts and doubts every day.”
Ms Lane, a former Oxfam fundraiser, and father John Letts, 62, have become the first British parents to be charged with terrorism after sending money to their son in Syria.
Despite police warnings, his parents sent him £223 in September 2015 and later tried to send another £1,000.
After a trial at the Old Bailey in June, they pleaded guilty to entering into a terrorist financing transaction and were given 15 months’ probation.
They said then. “We were convicted of doing what any parent would do if their child was in danger.”
In the book, Mrs Lane reveals the messages her son sent her, including his claims that he would blind his parents if they refused to convert to Islam.
Mrs Lane (right), a former Oxfam fundraiser, and father John Letts, 62 (left), became the first British parents to be charged with terrorism after sending money to their son in Syria.
After a trial at the Old Bailey in June, they were found guilty of entering into a terrorist financing arrangement and given 15 months’ probation.
During the trial they said: “We were convicted of doing what any parent would do if their child was in danger.” Photo: John Letts with his son
It was reported last month that Canada will be repatriated “Jihadi Jack” from the prison camp where he is being held raises fears that many ISIS sympathizers could soon return to their countries.
A diplomatic source said the Canadian government “went mad” in deciding to strip Letts of his British citizenship because he has “very little to do with Canada”.
Canada has announced it will bring 23 of its citizens back to the country after relatives of those arrested claimed the detention would violate their constitutional rights, The Telegraph reported.
The Canadian federal court ruling is based on prison conditions and that they have not been charged or convicted.
The decision stated: “The conditions of the men are even worse than the conditions of the women and children that Canada has just agreed to repatriate.
“There is no evidence that any of them have been tried or convicted, much less tried in a manner recognized or permitted by international law.”
Letts’ case is similar to that of Shamima Begum, 15, from Bethnal Green, east London, who fled to Syria to join ISIS.
She was one of three schoolgirls who traveled to Syria to join ISIS; stripped of her British citizenship after she was found nine months pregnant in a Syrian refugee camp in February 2019.
The Londoner fled the UK in February 2015 and lived under ISIS rule for more than three years, where he married a Dutch jihadi.
He now lives in the al-Roj camp in northern Syria, run by the Syrian Democratic Forces, which he described as “worse than prison” in his desperate bid to re-enter Western life.
He claims he was the victim of grooming and trafficking, and recently filed an appeal against being stripped of his citizenship, which national security judges are expected to rule on in the coming weeks.
Shamima Begum also lost her British passport after she was found nine months pregnant in a Syrian refugee camp in February 2019.
Source: |: This article originally belonged to Dailymail.co.uk