Britain’s ‘Jihadi Jack’ has called for repatriation to Canada in his first TV interview in years so he can ‘languish in prison’ there instead of being sent to a Syrian prison camp.
Jack Letts, 29, a Canadian originally from Britain who spent seven and a half years among suspected Islamic State members in northeastern Syria, was found by a television crew in a prison near Raqqa.
The bombshell interview with CTV News’ W5 program now marks the first time since 2019 that Letts has appeared on camera or spoken to the media.
The Muslin convert had held British and Canadian citizenship but declared himself an “enemy of Britain” after fleeing his home in Oxfordshire to fight in Syria in 2014.
After being captured by Kurdish authorities in 2017, he begged to be allowed back to Britain.
In Saturday’s interview, Letts denied he had ever been a member of ISIS, but said there were things he could not say because he was still behind bars.
Speaking to W5’s Avery Haines, the inmate said he would have “no problem” being brought back to Canada – even if it meant spending 100 years in prison.
“At least let me rot in a prison in Canada,” he said.
Jack Letts, 29, a Canadian originally from Britain who spent seven and a half years among suspected Islamic State members in northeastern Syria, was found by a television crew in a prison near Raqqa
The impressive interview with CTV News’ W5 program now marks the first time since 2019 that Letts has appeared on camera or spoken to the media
Letts, a Muslin convert, had held British and Canadian citizenship but declared himself an ‘enemy of Britain’ after fleeing his home in Oxfordshire to fight in Syria in 2014
Letts’ mother, Sally Lane, who has called on the Canadian government to repatriate all its own citizens held in Syrian camps and prisons, said Middle eastern eye that there appears to have been a marked deterioration in his condition over the past five years.
“I was shocked at Jack’s condition and how upset and clearly traumatized he is,” Lane said.
“I’m so angry at the Canadian and British governments for thinking it’s okay to completely destroy him as a human being. Jack will die if they don’t repatriate him. They know this, and yet they do nothing.”
Haines revealed in a W5 report that when she and her team found Letts after a days-long search, she was led “blindfolded and handcuffed” into a “soundproof interrogation room” in a basement by masked guards, noting that Letts was not wearing shoes upon arrival wore.
When asked by Haines if he had been a member of ISIS, Letts replied: ‘Was I an ISIS member? No. I said many things a long time ago because I was afraid.
“I can’t say everything because I’m still in prison.”
He said “naivety had played a role” in his decision to go to Syria. He said he was motivated by watching “videos of people being blown to pieces” and by a desire to help people.
‘I spoke to people who gave me the impression that ISIS was not what people said it was. As soon as I got there, I realized they weren’t what I thought.”
Letts said he had become an enemy of the group. He was imprisoned three times and was told he would be killed.
“Without exaggeration, more than twenty of my close friends were murdered by ISIS,” he said.
After converting to Islam at the age of 16, Letts traveled to the Middle East in 2014, where he married an Iraqi woman
The prisoner told W5 that after so many years in detention he no longer thought about what would happen in the future.
‘It’s like being in a desert. Every time you come to a dune, there is another dune behind it. So I stopped thinking,” he said.
After converting to Islam at the age of 16, Letts traveled to the Middle East in 2014 at the age of 18, where he married an Iraqi woman.
He was captured and imprisoned in 2017 by forces fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the terrorist group Levant (Isil).
In an interview with Sky News in 2019, Letts admitted to fighting the Syrian regime but said he regretted working with the “wrong people”.
He also said he felt guilty for what he did to his parents after they were convicted of financing terrorism after sending him cash.
They were sentenced to 15 months in prison, of which twelve months were conditional.
Sally Lane and John Letts, who is Canadian, had sent £223 to their son while he was in Syria, despite hearing he had joined IS, and later tried to send a further £1,000.
They said: ‘We were convicted because we did what any parent would do if their child was in danger.’
Letts is one of tens of thousands of people, many of them foreigners, detained by Kurdish-led forces in former IS-controlled Syrian territory and held in camps and prisons for years without charge.
Letts has previously said he was tortured during his captivity, but Kurdish authorities say they are acting in accordance with international human rights law.
Sally Lane (pictured with young Jack Letts), mother of British-born Islamist ‘Jihadi Jack’
Lane (right), a former Oxfam fundraiser, and father John Letts (left), 62, became the first British parents to be charged with terrorist offenses after sending money to their son in Syria
Letts’ case is similar to that of Shamima Begum, the 15-year-old 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. She was stripped of her British citizenship after being found nine months pregnant in a Syrian refugee camp in February 2019.
The Londoner fled Great Britain in February 2015 and lived under the rule of ISIS for more than three years, where she married a Dutch jihadist.
She now lives in the al-Roj camp in northern Syria, run by the Syrian Democratic Forces, which she described as “worse than a prison” in her desperate bid to be accepted back into Western life.