John Letts and his wife Sally Lane sent their son money while he was in the Middle East despite being aware that he was involved in countless crimes.

Jack Letts left his home in Oxford when he was 18 for a holiday in Jordan and Kuwait but never returned home. He became a member of Islamic State.

In early 2015, police warned his parents that sending him money would constitute a charge of funding terrorism, but Ms Lane transferred cash to a bank account in Lebanon anyway.

Old Bailey court in London heard she told her son that she would gladly “go to prison for you if I thought it gave you a better chance of reaching your 25th birthday”.

Mr Letts, 58, and Ms Lanes, 57, were found guilty on one charge of sending £223 (AU$410) in September 2015 but were acquitted on a second of giving their son £1,000 (AU$1838) in December that year.

The jury couldn’t reach a verdict on a third charge of sending £500 (AU$918) in January 2016.

They were sentenced to 15 months in jail, wholly suspended, just hours before two startling interviews with their son was aired on British television.

JIHADI JACK’S FIRST INTERVIEW

Letts, now 23, granted an interview to the BBC from a Kurdish prison, where he remains detained, in October last year. It couldn’t be aired until the conclusion of his parents’ trial.

In it, Letts is asked whether he accepts that he betrayed his country when he joined Islamic State.

“A traitor to Britain? You mean a traitor to Britain? It’s the first time I’ve heard that term in a long time,” Letts replied. “I know I was definitely an enemy of Britain. I have no doubts about this. I haven’t tried to make myself innocent.”

Letts told the BBC he “made a big mistake” by joining Islamic State and fighting with the terrorist group in Syria and Iraq.

“I regretted what I did but I thought, supposedly the British idea is that if you do make big mistakes, you can sort of go back. Not go back to Britain — I mean go back from your mistakes. You can set things right.”

Although, he attempted to distance himself from Islamic State-orchestrated attacks in the United Kingdom, including the bomb at Manchester Arena and the London Bridge massacre.

“I was in jail at the time,” Letts said.

Interviewer Quentin Sommerville pressed him on the point, saying that his recruitment by Islamic State “as a westerner, as a middle-class boy from Oxford” had emboldened others to join them.

“That’s one of the things I regret,” Letts said. “They used us as well. They uses as a sort of … what do they call it in English? Like a poster boy.”

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Letts revealed he was encouraged “in an indirect way” to wear and detonate a suicide vest and that he was willing to do it.

“I used to want to at one point, believe it or not,” he said. “Not a vest,” he clarified, “I want (sic) to do it in a car.”

Letts travelled first to Syria where he fought with Islamic State on the front lines, before heading to Iraq where he was seriously injured.

Letts insists he grew disillusioned with the terrorist group when he realised they had started to kill fellow Muslims. He quit in 2017 and was captured and jailed.

“I didn’t have a full plan. I thought I’d just get to Turkey and ring my mum, and just be like ‘I want to meet you somehow’.”

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He is unable to explain why he left home to fight with Islamic State, saying he had “a comfortable home” and a “very good relationship” with his parents, especially his mother.

“I thought I was leaving something behind and going to something better,” Letts said.

And he’s aware that the British public are unlikely to give him a second chance by allowing him to return home.

“I wouldn’t give me a second chance probably,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’ve been in two years, every few days I hear a new promise and it never gets kept.”

He converted to Islam when he was 16, he said, and dropped out of school two years later to travel to the Middle East.

“I thought it was some sort of morality actually at the time,” he said of the decision. “Why do I have this nice life, and others don’t? And then, on top of that, the idea of it being (in) Islamic State and it’s actually your duty to do this.”

He married a woman whose family was heavily involved in Islamic State and had a child, who he has never met.

Letts said he doesn’t believe he murdered anyone while fighting with the terror group.

The British Government has indicated it has no interest in allowing Letts to return.

In a second interview Letts gave to ITV News, which has also just been broadcast for the first time, he concedes that he “deserves what comes to me”.

“Of course I was a terrorist (but) it’s not the life I want to lead now,” he said.

PARENTS REMAIN HOPEFUL

In a statement read by a lawyer for Mr Letts and Ms Lane outside court yesterday, the couple said they did what any parents would for their child.

They believed their son’s life was in danger and felt compelled to act in any way to help him, the statement said.

“The fact the jury acquitted us of some of the allegations makes it clear that the jury accepted we believed that our son’s life was in imminent danger,” it read.

They had tried to do the right thing by co-operating with police after being led to believe it would help Letts get home, they said.

“But instead of helping us they used the information we provided to prosecute us.”

They remain hopeful of Letts being able to return home in the future and are campaigning for the government to show leniency, saying he has escaped from Islamic State.

His father has also appealed to the Canadian Government for assistance, as Letts holds dual citizenship there.

Detective Chief Superintendent Kath Barnes told the court during the trial that investigators had “huge empathy” for the couple and believed they were “not bad people”.

“It’s hard to imagine the kind of agony they must be going through because of the choices their son made.”

But the court also heard that the Mr Letts and Ms Lane were well aware of what their son was up to, having asked an academic expert on terrorism about whether it was likely he had engaged in conflict.

They were told it was “highly improbably” that he had not.

And months before Ms Lane sent him money for the first time, Letts posted on a former schoolfriend’s Facebook profile that he wanted to decapitate him.

The man had uploaded a photograph of himself after completing training in the British army, to which Letts replied: “I would love to perform a martyrdom operation in this scene.”