Transcripts For BBCNEWS HARDtalk 20240713

News, its hardtalk. Welcome to hardtalk, im stephen sackur. Alongside the humanitarian fallout from turkeys invasion of northern syria, there are grave security concerns. Not least, what will happen to the thousands of so called Islamic State militants imprisoned by Syrian Kurdish forces . My guests today, john letts and sally lane, are the parents of one such prisoner british born jack letts. He left the uk in 2014 to live in the so called is caliphate. Since then hes had his british citizenship revoked and his parents have been convicted under uk anti terror laws for sending him money. What will become what should become ofjack letts . Sally lane and john letts, welcome to hardtalk. Thank you. Thank you, stephen. You are in a very difficult situation right now because your son jack is, as far as we know imprisoned, held by Kurdish Forces in northern syria. Those forces currently under attack from the turkish army. What is the latest information you have about what is happening to your son . Well, we are having to rely on the journalist reports of whats happening in the region, and he is in qamishli in prison there. Thats a town in North Eastern syria . North eastern syria, yeah. And there are two prisons there. He is in one of them. And so really we are just having to look at whats happening things are changing minute by minute in the region, as to what is likely to happen to him and the other prisoners hes being held with. Is there any avenue you can get information through about jack . Can you contact, for example, British Government officials or canadian government officials, becausejohn, you are a canadian citizen and therefore jack has dual citizenship, or at least he did, until the british citizenship was revoked . No, all we get back is we have a little bit of consular access in syria and we know nothing. That is all they say, same with the british side, no one informs us of anything. The only thing we can rely on is social media orjournalists on the ground. There have been reports he has been taken by the americans to iraq. There are reports of all sorts of things, but we have no idea. Rumours did swirl the americans attempted to take several prisoners. We know they took two, the so called british citizens known as the beatles, who were high profile is terrorists, we do not know if they tried to take your sonjack with them as they left, that is the us forces. That term high profile, is the important one. There are high profile jihadi fighters and there seems to be evidence, for some of them, maybe the beatles, and i thinkjack is high profile but not necessarily a high profile jihadi fighter, because he was never a fighter. What is this doing to your own mental state as you havent had any direct contact, as i understand it, with jack, even through the red cross for several months . This is one of the most dangerous times that jack has faced. We have been trying to keep him alive for the past five years and there are points during that time that have been worse than others when he was trying to get out of raqqa, when we were trying to send him money so he could get out of raqqa, when he went into hiding. This has been a very long process, but this moment now where he is being besieged by all sides and faces danger from all different areas, from the regime, from hardcore islamist fighters, the possibility of what could happen if the turks come in, where the prisoners might be sent. Were obviously frantic with worry of what could happen. Its, erm. It is difficult to focus on anything, to be honest. It is your child and you believe he is innocent. So, it is difficult to, you know, to have a good nights sleep in a warm bed, or eat a nice meal. At least, i feel how do you do that, so you dont sleep and we are extremely stressed. It has destroyed our family really and our situation and also its destroyed our finances and everything else. You have just said something i need to pick up on. You just said, our child, we believe he is innocent. After all these five years of stress, agony and anguish, have you not come to terms with the fact that your son jack voluntarily signed up and joined Islamic State, the so called Islamic State movement, which we know is responsible for so much violence in the middle east and far beyond the middle east . If that was true, i would have no problems. Im not a father in denial. Ifjack has done anything wrong, he should pay the price, he should be tried and punished for that. I dont have a problem with that, i have no any sympathies for what extremists of any type have done. As far as we are concerned jack neverjoined isis, you say he signed up and joined the caliphate. Thats not true. Where is the evidence for that . Please show me something that proves that. And the only thing that can be used to prove that is the few interviews he did more recently last year. But for four years before that the media created this narrative to say he ran off, joined isis, joined up with the caliphate and participated in these atrocities. It is not true, we dont believe that is the case. If it was the case, i would not be here defending him. You say you are not in denial but there is circumstantial evidence and then there are the words we have from his own mouth which tell us he was in Islamic State. Even during our court case where we were prosecuted for having sent jack money to escape from syria, to pay people smugglers, there was a Court Instruction that made a distinction between being in isis territory, which jack was, and being a member of isis. That was an instruction to the jury that there is a distinction between the two. And, yes, jack freely admitted to us tha he was in is territory but always said he was never a member of isis and he has maintained that right from the start. And even in the court case, it was a five year forensic investigation. Thousands of messages betweenjack and us because he kept in Constant Contact with us. Not one message in there proved that he was ever a member of isis. Let us go through some of the messages and then we can talk about what jack has said in various media interviews. But if one looks at the timeline, there are different moments in the course of 2015 when it surely became obvious to you that he was a full, paid up member of Islamic State and their mindset. 0ne looks at the Facebook Post from july 2015 in which he talks about his knowledge that a former School Friend of his had signed up with the british army and there was a picture on social media of this friend in uniform, i believe, on a training course. And jack wrote, i would love to perform a martyr operation in this scene. He said he would cut off his former friends head if that friend came to the region in which jack was living. And how is anyone going to defend such a barbaric statement . But the fact is we dont believe theres messages were from jack. 0ur version of those messages, our defence to that in the court case was never reported. All the media has ever reported is the prosecution case. I dont believe that was hisjack had to hand over his facebook password early on. What about the picture . I am trying to answer the first question first. I cant prove obviously sitting here. Nobody can. Thats the point, isnt it . Anybody can hack Facebook Accounts and can use passwords. And everyone who went inside the territory, and he was inside the territory, iagree, and he had to hand over his password and he says that theres messages were not his. And if you look at the english, i dont believe it was his. As for the photograph. The photograph shows jack, unless you are denying it is jack at the tabqa dam which was liberated by force, by Islamic State fighters and it appears jack was there. And he was giving a salute which indicated he was fully supportive of Islamic State. No, i disagree with that as well. He was certainly there and as i say, once you are in isis territory, you cannot leave. I have no doubt hes in that territory. Hes a muslim inside isis territory. That is what he is guilty of and to many people thats enough to make him guilty of all sorts of things. The salute is the tawhid. That is the symbol of islam. Its the unity of islam. Im not a muslim. I dont understand all the philosophy. But it is the symbol of unity in islam. It was co opted by isis people. And his trousers he is wearing, i bought them, they are not combat trousers. He has a different t shirt on. But i dont believe that photo is enough to say he is a paid up, signed up, member of the caliphate. Let me. I cant ask him about these things. Jack should be able to answer these questions himself. One question that goes even further back. When he had converted to islam and clearly was becoming more and more radicalised. I disagree with the term already. Well, perhaps. I will finish the question and then you can tell me why it is problematic for you. It seems, i understand, that you were advised by a friend of his from the mosque he was attending in oxford that he was mixing in Dangerous Company and that you should confiscate his passport because it would be very bad if he were able to get himself to the middle east. With respect, this has all been gone through with a fine tooth comb in our court case and it was very well publicised. Thats not the situation we are in now. Jack should be able to answer these questions himself in a trial. There was a proxy trial for him through us, so we were asked these questions in exhaustive detail. Now we are in a situation where the prisoners have been held in a legal limbo. The government has just washed its hands of them, and that issue is what has triggered the turkish invasion and the whole realignment of the middle east all over again. It was this very issue of prisoners not being taken back by their governments and not being given a fair trial and people just pretending that the problem didnt exist. Of course, we have heard jacks voice in recent months, he has been interviewed on television by the bbc, by itv, by sky news. He has said. And i am going to quote him directly. Jack said, i am not going to say i am innocent. I am not innocent, i deserve what comes to me. To the bbc he said, i know i was definitely an enemy of britain. In the course of one interview, he said he had considered the possibility of being a suicide bomber. These are things that came from jacks mouth. I have also read parts of transcripts of that edited interview where he denies being a traitor to britain. Look at the context in which that is happening, from a journalistic perspective. So, he is being held by non state actors. He was brought into a room by men wearing balaclavas and a pistol. We know he was tortured by isis three times and was put on trial by isis in mosul for having opposed them. Then he is picked by the kurds and treated well at the beginning because they thought he was a hero who worked against isis. Then, as soon as the British Government gets involved, he goes into absolute silence. So, they lock him up. We know he has been interrogated 15 times by the british and the americans, but also the kurds. But there are things that happened there. We know he has mentioned electricity, hes locked in a cage, he doesnt see the light for ages. The red cross cannot access him, he cannot speak to his family, he cannot speak to a lawyer. Then suddenly his cell door opens up and they stick a camera in front of his face when someone says, are you a traitor or a collaborator . And i think thats duress. With respect, i cant speak for all the interviews, the bbc interview was conducted by a very experienced correspondent who followed all of the guidelines and it was clear to him this was not an interview conducted under duress. Jack letts wanted to speak to our correspondent. You say you are not in denial, but when i read those quotes to you, and you say you believe he was not affiliated with or a member of is, it does sound like you are in denial. What i am trying to do is sketch the context. If you ask someone who has been a prisoner for three years and treated really badly, and hes asked, are you under duress, would you like to answer questions . How do you know what has been said to him before or after that interview . And by the way a human rights lawyer, a very respected named Clive Stafford smith, who everyone knows and worked a lot in guantanamo, is the only person to speak to jack directly in semi private. And he says jack was never. He believesjack was never a member of isis, he never fought and has been tortured. How do you know what has happened to him in that cell . He doesnt have access to a lawyer, and everyone here believes they have a right that you should not speak, if you are being interviewed interrogated, is what it is you should have access to legal advice. Jack doesnt have access to anything like that. How do you know what they said to him . They might have said to him, we have your wife next door and we will treat her badly if you dont answer these questions properly and admit you are a member of isis. How do you know until you get him here . Everyone has a right to a fair trial. I thought it was the cornerstone of democracy, and the cornerstone of our system. We should bring people back and give them the right to defend themselves. It is not going to happen, it became clear this summer that the British Government had revoked his british citizenship. There is no way he can appeal and that leaves him only canadian. Canada has a democratic system as well and i trust that system very well. I think he would receive fair justice in canada. I would like to think he would receive fairjustice here but given the way the media has slanted this narrative, they have created this myth called jihadi jack. Every time the mentionjihadi jack, it is another nail in his coffin and another nail everyone is convinced he is guilty. No evidence has been presented. The photograph, the Facebook Messages that we think are not his and if you look at the english, he does not write english that way and then the interviews, i believe were conducted under duress. You have no idea what is happening in theirjail cells and i think torture happens in jail cells throughout the middle east. No evidence is solid. If there is, you say about denial, i dont believe i am in denial. I would be the first to stand up and condemn him if you showed me some serious evidence. You have also had to live with the criminal prosecution brought against yourselves which culminated in the summer of this year with you being found guilty, convicted of one charge under uk terrorism laws. What impact has that conviction had upon you both . We were found not guilty on the substantial charges of sending money forjack to escape syria. That has been underreported. Three charges, all involved sending money to jack . No. 0ne found that money was sent successfully to jack. I believe the figure was £233 . It was sent to a poor family in lebanon . But it was sent forjack . No it wasnt, there was a thought that some of it by getting him to give him a pair of glasses, but it was to support the poor family in lebanon. That charge happened in september but the Police Ignored that and only added the charge later. The two substantive charges as sally said were sending money to jack to help him escape from syria. That is the only reason we would have sent money. I guess the point that seems to me at the centre of the case against you was that you were warned repeatedly by the police, i think going back to march 2015, not to send money that could be ending up injacks hands because you would have no way of knowing whether then it would be added to the coffers of a terrorist organisation. We didnt. Go on. The first charge, the one we were found guilty of, i was interviewed for that voluntarily after the payment was made and the Police Officer interviewing me said, i wasnt going to be arrested, he said, you are not a criminal, sally. That was the end of it. That charge was only added on later after we sent the money, it got added onto the charge sheet. I guess the Central Point Everybody Needs to get around is that you were given a trial and you were convicted, convicted on this count of entering into a funding arrangement for the purposes of terrorism that contravened the 2000 terrorism act in the uk. The judge in sentencing said, he was not dogmatic, he said, it was one thing for parents to be optimistic about their children. This is a son you love very much, but in the context, you lost sight of realities and the warning signs were there, for you to see. Now with some distance from that trial, cant you accept thejudge is right . There were warning signs there for you to see, you ignore them . Sorry, the charge was under the terrorism act in the uk, the evidential bar is on the ground. You cant beat a charge under section 17 of the terrorism act for funding. It is the opinion of a Police Officer, that is all you need. There were reasonable grounds to suspect that some of the money you sent could have been used for terrorism, that is the charge. Lets be specific whether you, on reflection, agree with the judge there were warning signs aboutjack, what he was getting into, his mindset, that you failed to see. And the jury accepted that the money we sent him to escape, we were not guilty for because his life was in dangerfrom other Islamic State members. So the defence was one of duress, which means we had to send the money in order to save his life. He was in raqqa sending desperate messages, he had broken his cover. There was a short window of opportunity he could get out with a people smuggler. It was very well known that isis killed anybody who was trying to escape and thats why the jury accepted that. Everybody watching and listening to this will have deep sympathy for the agonies you have been through but nonetheless the judge said you had failed to see things you should have seen. You have talked openly and frankly about the degree of guilt you now feel for what has happened and it gets, to be honest, for all of us who are parents, it gets to some fundamental questions about the decisions made during parenting, the degree to which you are in your childrens lives, the degree to which you are knowledgeable of what they are up to. I am asking you, whether today you feel a sense of whether it be regret, remorse, guilt about some of the things you did as parents . I feel regret the money didnt get through and we wouldnt be in this position now. I was thinking going even further back, the way you parent to jack, long before he made that decision to fly off to the middle east and ultimately to go to the caliphate . Parented jack. I would never support anything extremist in that way. If i thought jack was actually involved with isis or anything, we would never have sent a penny. We didnt send any money to jack except to help him escape. I can repeat that 100 times. I would never have sent money, except the police said we could send it and we had to save his life. They accepted that the court, the judge accepted that, the jury accepted that. We had to try to help him get out. This is what you said. On the first charge. On this question of regret, john you said i have two regrets, that when he converted to islam, i didnt walk with him on that path and be more attentive. And, now i think his 0cd, was worse than week ever, as parents, addressed. I still believe that exactly. He didnt leave oxford to go to the caliphate. He went to jordan on a holiday and i really believe thats where he went. I wanted to go with him because as an archaeologist, i thought it would be a lovely place to go. He then went to kuwait to study languages, he spent several months there and there was no concern. We were in regular contact with him. But at the end of that, without talking to us, without our knowledge of support he went to turkey and then into syria. From there he went into iraq. It doesnt sound like you do feel a degree of personal guilt at all. Personal guilt for what exactly . That i created a son who went off . I believe he went to help. We had many discussions about this for months before and we talked about all the political issues, we always talked about things, about islam. I didnt walk on the journey with him in the sense i didnt become a muslim but we talked about everything. He thought women had rights, he was not an extremist. He walked away, the person who warned us to me was the extremist, who he walked away from. I need to ask you this basic question, you have not had direct contact with him for around three years, do you think you will ever see jack again . I think that is a very cruel question. It is a horrible question. It is a horrible question and i wish i didnt have to ask it, but i want to know how you feel about the future . My greatest fear is he will end up back in the hands of isis who will torture him and kill him. They were going to chop his head off the first time he tried to escape, as they did to many of his friends. I have nightmares every night and i cannot sleep. What do you want me to say . He has had nine lives so far, i want him to speak and say the truth. He has been a british and canadian person, lets listen to his story. You dont have to believe anything i say, you think i am in denial. I am not, im willing to accept it. But lets give him a chance to speak. He should be sitting here and answering questions. If he is a danger to society, lock him up, i dont have a problem with that. I am not but i am on the terrorism register. I have been trying to help the world with the work i do and yet i am on the terror register. He is guilty of being a muslim and of going to try to help people. I am sorry because this is an extraordinary, difficult and aanguishing subject and we have run out of time. Thank you both for agreeing to come onto hardtalk. Thank you very much. Hello there. Pressure will be building in for tuesday morning. So it looks like many places will start dry. You can see this area of High Pressure pushing in from the south west keeping this weather front at bay mainly affecting the far north of the country to start the day. We will have lost that weather front across the south east, so drier there too. So it becomes quite a chilly start to tuesday with some mist and fog around when skies clear. Those temperatures really drop. Dont be surprised if you see scenes like this across central and southern parts of england and wales to greet us this morning. Now, that mist and fog could only go on for a few hours but it should tend to lift and break and we should see a good deal of dry weather with some sunshine across england and wales and a vast improvement across the south east. More cloud further north certainly for scotland and Northern Ireland. Most of the rain to the far north with many places staying dry. Temperatures of 12 15 degrees in the south which will actually feel quite pleasant. And as for tuesday night, it stays dry with variable cloud across england and wales. Stays breezy for scotland and Northern Ireland with rain tending to flirt with the north west corner. Temperature wise, chilly in one or two spots particularly where skies clear. So, on into wednesday we hold onto the fine weather i think across much of the south east. We have this weather front still bringing wet and windy weather to the far north west and that low pressure system across spain and france bringing a lot of rainfall, mayjust influence the weather across the south east. A weather front here sending more cloud, perhaps one or two showers. For the north and the west, it stays windy. Outbreaks of rain which will become more persistent in parts of Northern Ireland, western scotland but in between again a slice of dry weather. Those temperatures 12 15 degrees. As we head on into thursday, it looks like that weather front in the south east may bring a little bit of rain but we have got low pressure to the north west which will push in to bring a spell of windy weather here. Now we could see gales or even severe gales for a time across western scotland. Showers and even longer spells of rain here. One or two showers further south, particularly in the south east where we will have that weak weather front. In between, some good spells of sunshine and again those temperatures are on the low to mid teens celsius. Low pressure then clears off to the north to end the week. We will see something a little bit drier once again but then we look to the south west, this new area of low pressure will slide in to bring increasing cloud and rain throughout the day. But we start friday off on a dry note for many with some sunshine, a few showers in the north which will be wintry on the hills. There will be some cold air across Northern Areas though as this winter and windy weather pushes northwards. We could see some snowfall on the high ground of scotland but it will be milder in the south. Welcome to newsday. Im rico hizon in singapore, and the headlines. The emperors new throne, japan prepares to anoint Emperor Naruhito in a formal ceremony. Im mariko 0i outside the imperial palace in tokyo where thousands of guests including foreign royals and dignitaries are here to attend the ceremony in a few hours time. Canada at the crossroads will liberal prime Ministerjustin Trudeau see off challenges from right and left to win a second term in office . Im kasia madera in london. Also in the programme. Ructions in thailands royalfamily