‘Jihadi Jack’ charged with Isil membership
A MAN from Oxford who converted to Islam and travelled to Syria has been charged with being a member of Isil.
Jack Letts, 21, who was dubbed “Jihadi Jack”, was arrested by Kurdish forces in northern Syria after fleeing the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) stronghold of Raqqa.
A statement from the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria – a self-declared autonomous region – said Mr Letts had been taken to a prison in Qamishli, Rojava, in the north of Syria.
Letts travelled to the country in 2014 – having earlier converted to Islam while at school in Cherwell, Oxon – and is understood to have been captured in May 2017.
He was pictured with long hair and a beard in Isil territory in Syria holding his index finger up to the sky, an Islamic gesture used by Isil as a symbol of their cause. He married in Iraq and now has a child.
Talking to the BBC in June from his prison cell, he said he hired a smuggler to help him escape the caliphate by motorbike before walking through a minefield into Kurdish territory.
Letts said he did not want anything to do with Isil. “I hate them more than the Americans hate them,” he said.
“I realised they were not upon the truth so they put me in prison three times and threatened to kill me.”
His parents have denied he went to Syria to fight with Isil, and started a petition to protest his innocence.