Parents sent son cash ‘they knew would fund terrorism’
THE parents of a white Muslim convert, whom they sent money to after he travelled to Syria to join Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), knew they were funding terrorism, the Old Bailey was told yesterday.
John Letts, 58, and Sally Lane, 56, whose son Jack Letts, 24, was nicknamed “Jihadi Jack”, paid for his flights to the Middle East in 2014.
But after visiting Jordan and Kuwait, Letts then travelled to Turkey, where he crossed over into Syria and allegedly joined the Isil terror group.
In 2015 and 2016, his parents, from Oxford, sent him around £2,000 in three money transfers, claiming it was only intended to support his welfare.
Opening the case for the prosecution, Alison Morgan QC told the jury of six men and six women: “They sent money to their son with knowledge or reasonable cause to suspect that it might be used to support terrorist activity or that it might fall into the hands of others who would use it for that purpose.”
Ms Lane bought a return airline ticket for Letts to travel to Amman in Jordan in May 2014.
In an email to a friend a few days after he left, she wrote that she was “so stressed” at “Jack saying he was going to fight in Syria”.
Letts, who converted to Islam aged 16, is being held by Kurdish authorities in Syria after being captured trying to flee Raqqa, the Isil stronghold, after it fell to Syrian army forces in 2017.
Mr Letts and Ms Lane deny three counts of entering into a funding arrangement for the purposes of terrorism. The trial continues.