JIHA DI JACK’S PLEA
I miss mum, pasties and Doctor Who, says Oxford-born ISIS recruit in Kurd jail He thought Paris attacks were ‘a good thing’ – but still wants to come home to UK
A MIDDLE-CLASS Muslim convert known as Jihadi Jack yesterday pleaded to be allowed to return to Britain from Syria.
Jack Letts, 23, from Oxford, who allegedly joined Islamic State, said he missed UK home comforts such as pasties and Doctor Who.
His appeal from detention in Syria reignited questions about how Britain should treat returning jihadists after IS bride Shamima Begum, 19, from London, provoked controversy with her demand to be allowed back.
Letts insisted he did not join IS when he fled to the Middle East five years after converting to Islam at the age of 16 while attending a comprehensive school. The joint UK-Canadian citizen used his first television interview to say he once believed that deadly IS attacks on the streets of Europe were justified.
He referred to viewing the 2015 Paris atrocities, which saw jihadists kill 130 people with guns and suicide bombs, as a ‘good thing’.
Letts described becoming convinced of the need for revenge attacks against the West while living in the Syrian city of Raqqa, which once served as the IS caliphate’s capital.
He insisted that air raids by US-led coalition forces fuelled his feeling that retaliation was necessary. He told ITV News: ‘At the time, you have this sort of – and this is what war does to you – you have this idea of “Why shouldn’t it happen to them?”
‘Genuinely, at the time, we had this idea that when you’re living in Raqqa getting bombed every five minutes by coalition jets and you
see, literally... I’ve seen children burnt alive.’ Letts suggested his attitude later softened, adding: ‘But then I realised they have nothing to do with it.’ He has been imprisoned in Kurdish-held northern Syria for over 20 months after being captured by militia while fleeing IS territory and trying to reach Turkey.
Speaking about wanting to return to Britain, Letts said: ‘If the UK accepted me then I’d go back to the UK – it’s my home. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.’
He said he did not know whether his Canadian citizenship was still valid but stressed: ‘I feel British – I’m British.’ Asked about what he missed about UK life, he said: ‘I miss people mostly. I miss my mum. I know that sounds a bit toddler-ish.
‘Even if I could just see my mum...I would like just a phone call, I don’t know if Britain can do that for me here, but I’d like just a phone call to my mum – it’s been two years.’
He added: ‘I miss pasties. It’s not really English – sort of Scottish, isn’t it? I miss pasties. And Doctor Who. Sounds a bit stupid. That’s all.’
But Letts accepted he was unlikely to be returned to Britain, claiming that ‘nobody cared’ about his plight. ‘I don’t think I’m going to be given... back to Britain, for example...or Let me come home: Jack Letts in TV interview yesterday. Right, in Syria in 2016 some Canadian official is going to come and help me because like I said – no one really cares,’ he told ITV.
He said his personal pleas for assistance from UK and Canadian officials had gone unanswered. His only contact with the UK had been censored letters from his parents delivered by the Red Cross.
Letts’s Canadian father John and British mother Sally have repeatedly called on the authorities to assist their son. His parents, who are due
‘I’ve seen children burnt alive’
to go on trial at the Old Bailey in May accused of sending him money, claim he went to the Middle East for ‘religious and humanitarian reasons’. His dual nationality means that Letts could in theory have his British citizenship revoked if the Home Office wished to take action. He is expected to stand trial in Syria.
Letts has been described as a bright child who had obsessive-compulsive disorder and dropped out of education. He converted to Islam at 16 while studying in Oxford and first travelled to the Middle East in May 2014 to visit a friend in Jordan.
He claimed to have learned Arabic there, later moving to Kuwait and Iraq before eventually ending up in Syria where IS forces had focused their efforts to establish a caliphate.
Letts told ITV that he married an Iraqi woman while living on ‘ the Oxford Street of Raqqa’ and she later gave birth to his son, although he has not seen the child and does not know where he is.
Echoing Begum’s pleas, Letts said Western governments should step up their efforts to bring women and children home from Kurdish-run camps. ‘If I have to stay here two more years – I’m not trying to make myself seem like some sort of hero – and they have to take back the women in the camps, I don’t mind,’ he said. ‘But it feels a bit ridiculous now – if my request is anything it’s that they change this policy, they do something here.’
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘We do not comment on individual cases, but any decisions to deprive individuals of their citizenship are based on all available evidence and not taken lightly.’