Muthana ‘saved up benefits money’

JAILED terrorist Aseel Muthana claims he was fleeing the country to join Islamic State when his mum phoned to say police had turned up looking for him at the family home in Cardiff, writes Chris Hughes.

He had previously been questioned by counter-terror officers and they were just hours behind him as he made his move after weeks of plotting.

He got the call in Cyprus while en route to Syria – where he would meet his jihadi older brother.

Muthana, 24, said of the call from his family home: “My mum phoned and said, ‘Where are you?’ I told her I was on my way home and would be there in a few hours.

“She said the police had been to the house asking for me and I had better go home.”

Speaking to the Mirror from his cell in Rojava, where he is being held by the Western-backed Syrian Democratic Army, Muthana told of how he planned his journey to the war-torn country amid scrutiny from British authorities and interventions by his concerned parents. And he said the cash for his journey came from part-time jobs and saving up benefits.

Muthana made his journey to Syria in 2013, aged 17, after spending weeks plotting how to dodge police.

Months of grooming on Skype by Nasser, an IS fighter in Syria, had sealed his determination to join the death cult. But he knew he was firmly on the radar of anti-terror police.

He said: “I was convinced I was going to get caught by the British authorities. They would come to my house and that made me scared.

“It was people from the Prevent scheme and the police. It was a terror unit. They took statements off me. And they would ask me about my brother... what he was doing, about me and my beliefs.”

He claims he saved up £300 from part-time jobs, including selling ice cream, but much of the money for his journey came from benefits. And he secretly got a new passport after his mum confiscated his travel ID amid fears he wanted to go to Syria.

Muthana admitted: “I was getting Education Maintenance Allowance of £30 a week. My mum took my passport so I went to the passport office and told them I lost my old passport.

“I took a coach to Gatwick and flew to Cyprus, getting a return ticket to avoid attention, and I had a suitcase full of clothes. Once in Cyprus, I thought I was being followed. But then my mum phoned.”

Nasser had told him to go to Adana in southern Turkey and then on to Urfa, where he would be picked up by an IS smuggler.

The smuggler picked him up from his cheap hotel and drove him through the border with Syria, from Akcacale in Turkey to Tel Abiad, just yards inside the war-torn country.

There is no way of knowing if Muthana, who says he is desperate to be jailed in the UK, is lying or if some his claims are true.

But the Mirror showed its interview with him to a former British military intelligence officer, who believes he shows signs of having had training in how to behave during interviews with the police or press.