JIHADI Jack’s parents have moaned their lives are “ruined” after they were convicted of sending cash to their ISIS terrorist son. John Letts, 58, and his wife Sally Lane, 56, wired £223 to their Muslim convert son even though they had every reason to believe he had joined the barbarous terror group in Syria. They […]
JIHADI Jack’s parents have moaned their lives are “ruined” after they were convicted of sending cash to their ISIS terrorist son.
John Letts, 58, and his wife Sally Lane, 56, wired £223 to their Muslim convert son even though they had every reason to believe he had joined the barbarous terror group in Syria.
They were spared jail on Friday after being found guilty of funding terrorism in September 2015.
But they are still worried about their son, who is currently rotting in a Kurdish jail in northern Syria.
Sally told the Mail on Sunday: “Of course, I’m immensely pleased not to be in custody. But my career and my life are in ruins.
“The people I used to work with don’t return my calls. Above all, Jack is still a prisoner.”
Jack Letts, 23, fled the UK for Syria in 2014 when he was just 18 after believing he was “going to something better”.
He told the BBC he was an “enemy of Britain” and was prepared to wear a suicide vest for the bloodthirsty terror group.
Prosecutor Alison Morgan QC said the couple, from Oxford, “turned a blind eye to the obvious” – that their son had joined the murderous terrorist group by the time they sent £223 in September 2015.
But the couple, from Oxfordshire, insisted their son was trapped in ISIS-stronghold Raqqa and were acting under “duress” fearing he was in mortal danger.
John said: “I’ve spent my life trying to help society, not destroy it.
“Being found to have supported terrorism is a tremendous blow. It’s going to have a huge impact. Inside, it destroys me.”
Jack became a Muslim in his teens – with his prayers soon becoming an “OCD ritual” he would perform five times a day.
His dad says he would be awake between 3am and 5am praying “trying to get it right”, which John believes made him “vulnerable to manipulation”.
Despite airing concerns to a family friend that Letts wanted to fight in Syria, Lane paid for her son to travel to Amman, Jordan on May 26, 2014.
He was due to return on June 5, but he did not, and began to study Arabic in Kuwait – having received £350 from his mother using his real name.
Lane had told jurors she was “horrified” when he rang her to say he was in Syria in September 2014.
She said: “I screamed at him, ‘How could you be so stupid? You will get killed. You will be beheaded’.”
Despite his ever-increasingly violent Facebook posts, John and Sally sent him the cash – accepting Jack’s assurance it had “nothing to do with jihad”.
Then, in December 2017, the parents claim they were given permission by cops to send Jack money to pay for a people smuggler to get him out of the warzone.
But they claim this was later rescinded – with a document stating prosecution was a “possible outcome”.
They were cleared by jurors on Friday of attempting to send the £1,500.
John told the newspaper he “wakes up screaming, certain Jack’s been tortured, Jack’s been killed” – but has vowed he’ll “never give up on Jack”.
While Sally said: “‘I feel guilty when it’s a nice, sunny day, because Jack is shut up in a room with no access to the open air.
“My fear now is they are trying to make him so ill he either dies or kills himself.”
Jihadi Jack fled the UK in 2014 when he was 18 to join ISIS in war-ravaged Syria.
While in Syria, Jack reportedly changed his name to Abu Mohammed and married an Iraqi woman with whom he has a son, Muhammed.
He created a life for himself in the country – learning Arabic in Jordan before moving to Kuwait, then to Iraq and Syria living on “the Oxford Street of Raqqa”.
In February, he begged to come back to the UK after being left to rot for two years in a Kurdish prison.
The Muslim convert, originally from Oxford, said he misses pasties and watching Dr Who.
