Grandparents fight to rescue
THE British grandparents of a three-yearold boy stuck in Syria after his jihadi father was killed are desperate to get him home.
Ashfaq and Mahfooz Khurshid’s son Haroon was a Briton who went to fight for Islamic State in 2013 without telling his parents. It was after he was brainwashed by radical preacher Anjem Choudary.
Khurshid, who abandoned his studies at Queen Mary University of London, was killed by a sniper in July 2016, aged 21. Months before he fathered Salman Khurshid, now three, with Canadian jihadi bride Aisha Razzaq. A month ago, Razzaq, who wants to stay with the terror group, told the Khurshids she would get Salman out of Syria so they could collect him, as they were running out of supplies.
But the couple have not heard from her since and now fear the worst.
The Khurshids, a separated couple from Waltham Forest, east London, had maintained distant contact with the “highly radicalised” woman for the sake of their grandson, and encouraged her to allow them to get him. Initially, she said no but last month she finally relented. Mrs Khurshid said: “My grandson is just an innocent child.
“He deserves a chance to live in a safe place, where he has family. We could offer him so much love and support.
“We would like nothing more than to hold him and bring him up in a safe country.”
“I have only had one face-to-face conversation with him online and I told him I love him and he said the same back.”
The International Observatory of Human