Bring our son home or we’ll sue Foreign Office, say Jihadi Jack parents
THE parents of a middle-class Muslim convert from Oxford who claims he has been tortured by Kurdish militia plan to sue the Foreign Office to force the Government to bring him home.
Jack Letts, nicknamed Jihadi Jack after he travelled to Raqqa in Syria in 2014, was captured by Kurdish PYD forces after he escaped from IS.
This newspaper disclosed last week that nothing has been heard of Letts, 21, since July 8, when he sent his parents, John and Sally, anguished messages from his prison cell in Syria.
His parents’ solicitor, Tayab Ali, last night revealed that besides suing the British Government, he will this week also file a criminal complaint against Kurdish officials at the PYD’s European office in Berlin.
He will allege that, by defending Letts’s treatment and unlawful detention, they are complicit – a crime under German law. Both actions are being supported by the human rights charity Reprieve. Letts insists he did not fight for IS, and before his escape condemned them – for which, he says, he was detained in the terror group’s jails.
The basis for his case is the claim in messages to his parents that his Kurdish interrogators were supplied with questions by British officials.
Mr Ali wrote on Friday asking the Foreign Office to intervene.
The PYD has denied torture. The Foreign Office said it could do nothing while Letts was in Syria as there is no UK consulate there.