Jihadi Jack’s parents bought plane ticket for Middle East ‘grand adventure’ despite terror warning, court hears

The parents of a teenage Muslim convert bought him a plane ticket to the Middle East for a “grand adventure”, despite being warned that he was radicalised and wanted to fight in Syria.

The Old Bailey heard that Jack Letts’s parents had been “supportive” when he converted to Islam aged 16 in Oxford.

Sally Lane, 56, and John Letts, 58, later helped him travel to Jordan and allegedly tried to send him more than £1,700 after he reached Isis territory.

The defendants, of Chiswell Road in Oxford, deny three charges of funding terrorism.

But opening the case on Wednesday, prosecutors said they “knew or had reasonable cause to suspect” their son had joined Isis in Syria and had been warned about his activities and the consequences of their alleged actions.

Alison Morgan QC told the jury that members of an Oxford mosque Jack attended initially thought he was “curious about Islam and keen to learn”.

“But he then came into contact at the mosque with men who appeared to introduce him to a more radical ideology,” she added.

“Jack began to express himself in more extreme language and he appeared to have been radicalised by others.”

One of the teenager’s friends from the mosque, Anwar Belhimer, contacted Mr Letts in May 2014 because Jack had told him of plans to travel to Kuwait.

The court heard that he “urged Mr Letts to stop his son from travelling and to confiscate his passport”, warning that he had been saying “worrying things”.

Ms Morgan said that at a meeting with Jack and his father, Mr Belhimer “pleaded with Jack not to travel, saying that there were other ways that he could help the people of Syria rather than by going out to fight”.

“Mr Belheimer’s engagement with John Letts was a clear warning to the defendants about Jack’s radicalisation and his intentions, before he even left this country,” the prosecutor added.

“Despite the concerns that had been expressed to them about Jack’s potential radicalisation, and against the background of their own concerns about Jack’s emotional wellbeing, the defendants permitted Jack’s travel.”

On 24 May 2014, Ms Lane bought a ticket from London Heathrow to the Jordanian capital of Amman, and Jack – who was then 18 – flew out two days later.

The court heard that a return flight was booked for June, but never used.

Prosecutors showed the jury an email where Ms Lane told a friend she had been stressed about “Jack saying he was going to fight in Syria”, but had then told his parents he had “decided not to fight”.

“You may want to consider why, if she thought that there was any possibility of Jack going to fight in Syria, she decided to pay for his flight nonetheless,” Ms Morgan told jurors.

The court heard that analysis of phones seized from the family home suggested that Jack remained in Jordan until September 2014 and it “became clear” that he would not be using his return ticket.

He initially told his parents he wanted to travel to Kuwait and they discussed the plan in “happy exchanges”.

The jury was read an email from Mr Letts to his son reading: “Hi bud. It’s weird emailing you so far away but hey, you’re on a grand adventure.”

Jack’s parents sent him money transfers totalling £350 in Jordan and £900 at a location where they “understood him to be” in Kuwait.

They are not charged with a criminal offence over those funding because Jack was not yet in Iraq or Syria, but prosecutors said he was “about to travel into Islamic State territory”.

Ms Morgan told the jury of “clear warning signs about what Jack was doing”, including a message from an Oxford PhD student with links to Kuwait raising concerns about the “company he is keeping”.

Mr Letts wrote in an email that he was “not getting much info back from him”, until Jack asked for money to leave Kuwait in August 2014.

Phone records from the following month show Jack was in Turkey, the court heard, and the “tone of communications changed”.

Mr Letts emailed his son saying: “Jack, a father should never live to see his son buried. Please, I beg you my son, come home or at least leave where you are and do not get so involved … there are many other things you can do to help and carry out Allah’s will.”

He said that Ms Lane was “collapsing with fear and sadness”, writing: “You have misled us. You were supposed to be studying in Kuwait. Where are you? What are you doing?”

Mr Letts added: “You don’t have to die to help your fellow Muslims.”

He later told the Oxford academic who raised concerns that Jack was not in Kuwait and had “gone to a more radical place”.

The court heard that Ms Lane contacted a man called Dewan Musa, who she described as being “one of Jack’s most militant friends” from the mosque.

In September 2014, she wrote to Musa: “I believe my son received help from people from Portsmouth to travel to a warzone.”

The court heard that Ms Lane later obtained Facebook messages between Jack and Musa by accessing her son’s account and concluded that the man was “obviously a fighter, perhaps he is the one who helped him”.

Excerpts of the conversation read to the jury that Jack and Musa had discussed Isis’s goals and a “path”.

“We suggest the path being talked about was the route to get into Islamic State territory and that is what Musa was assisting Jack to do,” Ms Morgan told the court.

“It was in this period that Ms Lane was making money transfers to Jack … all of this would have become apparent to Ms Lane when she captured the conversation and studied it. She was aware of what he’d done, plans he’d made with Dewan and that the money was not being used for study.”

Ms Morgan told the jury that Ms Lane and Mr Letts were not alleged to be terrorists or have sympathies for Isis themselves.

“However, they sent money to their son, with knowledge or reasonable cause to suspect that it might be used by him or others to support terrorist activity,” she added.“The law is focused on the greater good, stopping money flowing into terrorist groups.”

Ms Morgan accused the parents of committing terror offences “despite being warned by a wide variety of people: those who had associated with Jack Letts before he travelled, academics who told the defendants what to do and not to do who they had sought out for advice, a charity worker who advised them as to how they might encourage their son to come back from Syria”.

“It was not open to these defendants to take the law into their own hands and to send money to their son, whatever their own reasons and motives may have been,” she added.

The trial continues.