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The mother of British-born Islamist ‘Jihadi Jack’ has said she has ‘guilty thoughts’ about whether his ‘liberal’ upbringing and ‘chaotic’ childhood led him to flee to Syria to become a self-proclaimed ‘enemy of Britain’ ‘.
In an autobiography, Sally Lane, 60, wrote that she wonders if her “too liberal” parenting style influenced her son’s decision to travel to the Middle East to join ISIS.
Letts, now 28, held dual British and Canadian citizenship and grew up in Oxfordshire. She fled to Syria as a teenager in 2014, using money her parents gave her to visit a friend in Jordan.
He reportedly told his parents that he intended to learn Arabic and study the Qur’an on a three-month trip to Kuwait, but joined ISIS in Raqqa.
After being captured by Kurdish authorities in 2017, he begged 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 his ‘chaotic’ childhood led him to become a self-proclaimed ‘ enemy of Great Britain’. ‘
In an autobiography, Sally Lane, 60, wrote that she wonders if her ‘too liberal’ parenting style influenced Jack Letts’ (pictured) decision to travel to the Middle East to join ISIS.
Letts, now 28, dueled British and Canadian citizenship and grew up in Oxfordshire. She fled to Syria as a teenager in 2014.
He has remained in a Kurdish prison in Syria ever since.
In the memoir Reasonable Cause to Suspect, Lane explains that her son’s guardians were concerned about his misbehavior at university, adding that she wonders if it was her fault for not taking “a firm enough hand with him,” according to The times.
Explaining his “self-recrimination”, he said he regrets staying with the guests when Letts was young, adding that they 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 obsessive-compulsive disorder “seriously enough” and that perhaps she was given “too much agency at a young age”, so she grew up thinking she could “change the world”. .
She added: “Maybe he had been traumatized when, at the age of three, his father and I had separated for a couple of years and he had spent his formative years in a chaotic household.”
“Over and over again, I have gone over all the incidents from his childhood where he could have been better or acted differently.
‘All these guilty thoughts and doubts I’ve lived with on a daily basis.’
Lane, a former Oxfam fundraiser, and her father, John Letts, 62, became the first British parents to be charged with terrorism offenses after sending money to their son in Syria.
Despite police warnings, her parents sent her £223 in September 2015 and then tried to send her a further £1,000.
After a trial at the Old Bailey in June, they were found guilty of entering into a terrorist financing deal and received 15-month suspended sentences.
They said at the time: ‘We have been condemned for doing what any parent would do if their child was in danger.’
In the book, Lane reveals messages sent by her son, including his claims that he would disown his parents if they refused to embrace Islam.
Lane (right), a former Oxfam fundraiser, and father John Letts (left), 62, became the first British parents to be charged with terrorism offenses after sending money to their son in Syria .
After an Old Bailey trial in June, they were found guilty of entering into a terrorist financing deal and received 15-month suspended sentences.
At the time of the trial, they said: ‘We have been convicted of doing what any parent would do if their child was in danger.’ In the photo: John Letts with his son
Last month it was reported that Canada will repatriate ‘Jihadi Jack’ from the prison camp where he is being held, raising fears that dozens of ISIS sympathizers may soon return to their home countries.
A diplomatic source said the Canadian government had been “freaked out” by the decision to strip Letts of British citizenship because it had “so little to do with Canada”.
Canada said it would bring 23 of its citizens back to the country after relatives of those detained argued that prevention would violate their constitutional rights. The Telegraph informed.
The Canadian federal court’s decision was based on prison conditions and that they have not been charged or convicted.
The ruling read: ‘The conditions of the… men are even more dire than those of the women and children Canada has just agreed to repatriate.
“There is no evidence that any of them have been tried or convicted, let alone tried in a manner recognized or sanctioned by international law.”
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 students who traveled to Syria to join ISIS; She had her British citizenship stripped of her 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 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 re-admitted to Western life.
He claims that he is a victim of manipulation and trafficking, and recently appealed against the deprivation of his citizenship, on which national security judges are expected to decide shortly.
Shamima Begum also lost her UK passport after she was found nine months pregnant in a Syrian refugee camp in February 2019.