Yahoo News Jihadi Jack feels 'guilty' for his parents' conviction
A muslim convert known as Jihadi Jack has said he feels guilty about his parents' conviction of funding terrorism after they sent him cash.
Jack Letts, 23, left his middle-class home in Oxford in 2014 and became one of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (Isil) most notorious recruits before he was captured.
He is currently incarcerated in a jail run by Kurdish authorities in Northern Syria, but apologised to his parents and said he wants to return to the UK.
He told Sky News: “I feel guilty because I’m the reason they are going through this.
“They didn’t do anything wrong. They sent me money to leave. It’s not like they were funding some sort of terrorist activity.”
Jack’s parents, Sally Lane and John Letts, were spared jail at the Old Bailey on Friday, when they were handed a sentence of 15 months, suspended for a year, for funding terrorism over a payment of £223 to a man in Lebanon in 2015 at Jack’s request.
Letts added: “I was surprised they were convicted. They are definitely not Islamic fundamentalists. They are not even Muslims.
“It’s two atheists convicted for Islamic terrorism - it doesn’t make much sense.”
He said, although it seems unlikely, he would “love to go home” and said he had “no intention of blowing [British people] up.”
After their sentencing, Ms Lane and Mr Letts spoke of their son’s obsessive approach to his Muslim faith, saying he was waking in the middle of the night to perfect his prayer, and scared that he would “go to hell” if he got it wrong.
The former Cherwell School student was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) when he was a teenager, and turned to prayer as one of his OCD rituals.
John Letts told the Mail on Sunday: “He was terrified that if he got anything wrong and didn’t start all over again he would go to hell.
“He’d wake in the middle of the night for the pre-dawn prayer, but where that might take most Muslims a few minutes, he’d be up from 3am to 5am washing, praying, trying to get it right. He’d fall asleep in school and get into trouble.
“I’m convinced this made him vulnerable to manipulation.”
They also committed their continued support to their son, with Mr Letts adding: “A father does not give up on his son, and I’ll never give up on Jack.”
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