Why won’t Britain fly Jihadi Jack home to face justice?
No charge. No trial. No hope. And yet MORE claims of torture from Muslim convert who holds a UK passport, so...
THE Mail on Sunday has forced the Kurdish militia holding Jack Letts, the middle-class Muslim convert from Oxford, to prove he is alive – only for him to claim he has been tortured and denied treatment for a kidney disease that could kill him.
In a harrowing phone conversation, Letts, 22, known as ‘ Jihadi Jack’, said he had tried to kill himself because conditions in the Syrian jail where he is held by the Kurdish PYD are so bad. However, The Foreign Office has repeatedly refused to help him.
Letts, who has a history of mental illness, said he had been confined for 35 days in a 6ft by 3ft cell and forced to soil himself because he had no access to a lavatory – a common torture in Syria.
Letts added: ‘I tried to kill myself but failed when I was in solitary confinement. I started to go insane and talk to myself, and I thought dying was better… so I tried to hang myself.’
The phone call last month to a Canadian diplomat came after this newspaper contacted PYD officials in Syria, Britain and Germany.
The MoS pointed out there had been no word from Letts since he
‘I do not mind if you put me in prison’
was allowed to send a text to his parents on July 8 saying he had been tortured. We said we feared he was dead, or had been treated so badly that the Kurds dare not let him speak.
Within hours, a PYD spokesman in Rojava, the Kurdish enclave of northern Syria where Letts is held in the city of Qamishli, sent an email promising the prisoner would phone this newspaper the next day. He failed to do so but he was allowed to talk to a Canadian diplomat. The MoS has heard a recording of the call.
Letts has dual Canadian/British nationality, but unlike Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, the two IS ‘Beatles’ whose capture was announced by the Kurds last week, he has not been stripped of his British citizenship.
Although British Intelligence has a substantial presence in Rojava and is helping to interrogate Kotey and Elsheikh, the Foreign Office has always refused to help Letts.
In a letter to his family’s lawyer last week, it said this was because Britain has no consulate in Syria. It could help only if he went to a UK mission elsewhere.
Letts was brought up in an afflu- ent Oxford neighbourhood by his father, John, an organic farmer, and Sally, a books editor. He converted to Islam at 16 after suffering mental health problems that disrupted his schooling.
He went to study Arabic in Kuwait in May 2014 and then disappeared. That September he phoned his parents and revealed he was in Syria. He has always denied joining IS.
As the MoS revealed last year, he sent his parents texts after he fled the former IS ‘capital’ Raqqa for Rojava in May, saying he had grown to loathe the terrorist group and had been detained by them for claiming they were ‘un-Islamic’.
In his phone call he told the diplomat he wanted to go to Canada and was ready to face trial. ‘If you want to put me in prison, I understand that. I do not mind,’ he said, adding: ‘Is there any idea that you guys might take me to Canada, or somewhere else, some sort of international prison like Guantanamo? Any place other than here is bet- ter… the situation here is terrible.’ He revealed he was being held in a cell built for eight with 29 other prisoners – some of whom had threatened him.
He was not allowed fresh air or exercise. When he felt he was losing his mind in solitary confinement he
‘Tell Mum I’m sorry. I will try to be a better person’
wrote to the prison authorities begging for help. ‘I scratched my face and signed it with my own blood, thinking someone is going to listen. But no one listened,’ he said.
He has also endured the agony of passing kidney stones because of a hereditary condition that has killed close members of his family.
‘It has been seven months since I’ve seen a doctor. Last time… he said you have cysts on your left kidney. I’ve convulsed twice in the last three months – convulsions from the pain,’ he said. He also revealed he had a lump on one of his testicles. Last year, the PYD said it had charged Letts with being a member of IS. But he told the diplomat this was untrue. ‘They understand that my case is not here… they expect that someone would come take me and press charges against me in my own country,’ he said. Letts ended his call by saying: ‘Tell my Mum I’m sorry. Tell my Dad I’m sorry. Tell them if I ever get out of this place I am going to try and be a better person.’ The MoS put detailed questions to the Kurds about Letts’s alleged treatment. They did not reply.