sally lane and john letts, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. thank you, stephen. this is bbc news, the headlines: kurdish—led forces — many of them injured — have pulled out of a key town in north—east syria, during a temporary five—day truce. they left ras—al—ain, along with huge numbers of fleeing civilians. you are in a very difficult a us withdrawal has paved the way situation right now, for a turkish military offensive because your son jack, in the region. is, as far as we know imprisoned, held by kurdish forces in northern syria. those forces, currently under attack violent protests continue in chile — against the high cost of living. from the turkish army. president pinera has defended his decision to call what is the latest information a state of emergency, saying the country's "at war". you have about what is eight people are known to have been happening to your son? killed since the unrest well, we are having to rely on the journalist's reports began on friday. of what's happening in the region and he is in qamishli, in prison there. that's a town in north—eastern syria? north—eastern syria, yeah. australian newspapers have blacked out their front pages — to protest against to strict national security legislation. industry insiders say the media is subject to a regime of intense government secrecy — there are two prisons and journalists risk criminal charges, just for doing their jobs. there and jack is in one of them, now on bbc news, it's hardtalk and really, we are just having to look at what's happening and things are changing minute by minute in the region, as to what is likely to happen

to him and the other prisoners with stephen sackur. he is being held with. is there any avenue you can get information through about jack? can you contact, for example, british government officials welcome to hardtalk, or canadian government officials, becausejohn, you are a canadian i'm stephen sackur. citizen and jack has dual citizenship, or at least he did alongside the humanitarian until the british fallout from turkey's invasion of northern syria, citizenship was revoked? there are grave security concerns. we get a little bit of consular not least, what will happen access in syria and we know nothing. to the thousands of so—called islamic state militants imprisoned that's all they say, and same with the british side, so no one informs us of anything. by syrian kurdish forces? the only thing we can rely on is social media orjournalists on the ground. my guests today, john letts there have been reports he has been and sally lane, are the parents of one such prisoner — taken by the americans to a rack. british—born, jack letts. there are all sorts of things, but we have no idea. —— iraq. he left the uk in 2014 to live rumours did swell the americans in the so—called is caliphate. attempted to take several prisons. we know they took two, since then he's had his british citizenship revoked and his parents the two known as the beatles, have been convicted under uk anti—terror laws for sending him money. 00:01:54,942 --> 2147483051:37:42,187 what will become, what should 2147483051:37:42,187 --> 4294966103:13:29,430 become of jack letts? who were high profile is terrorists, we do not know if they tried to take your son jack 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 high profile jihadi fighter, because he was never a fighter. what is this doing to your own mental state because you haven't 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 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. we are obviously frantic with worry over what could happen. it's... it's difficult to focus on anything, to be honest. it is your child and you believe he is innocent so it is difficult you know, to have a good night's sleep in a warm bed, or eat a nice meal. at least, i feel, how do you do that, so you don't sleep and we are extremely distressed and it has destroyed our family really, and our situation, and also it's 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's 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. i'm not a father in denial, ifjack has done anything wrong, he should pay the price, he should be tried and punished for that. i don't have a problem with that, i don't have any sympathies for what extremists, of any type, have done. as far as we knowjack neverjoined isis, you say he signed up and joined the caliphate. that is not true. please show me the evidence that proves that. the only thing that can be used to prove that is the interviews he did last year. 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's not true, we don't believe that is the case, if that was the case, we would not be here defending him. you say you are not in denial but we have the words from his own mouth which tell us he was in islamic state. even in our court case when we were prosecuted for having sent jack money to escape from syria, to pay people smugglers, there was a court distinction that made a distinction between being in is territory, which jack was, and being in isis. that was the distinction made to thejury. yes, jack freely admitted to us that he was in isis territory but never said he was a member of isis and he maintained that right

from the start. even in the court case, it was a five year forensic investigation, thousands of messages betweenjack and us because he kept in constant contact. not one message in there proved that he was ever a member of isis. well, 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, that it surely became obvious to you that he was a full, paid—up member of islamic state and their mindset. one 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. jack wrote, "i would love to perform a matyr operation in this scene." he said he would cut off his former friend's head if that

friend came to the region in which jack is living. how is anyone going to defend such a barbaric statement? the fact is, we don't believe those messages were from jack. our defence to that in the court case was never reported. all the media has ever reported is the prosecution case. i don't believe that was his. jack had to hand over his facebook password early on. what about the picture? i'm trying to answer the first question. i can't prove, obviously, sitting here, i cannot prove the point. anybody can hack facebook accounts and use passwords. he was inside the territory, and he had to hand over his password and he says those messages were not his. if you look at the english, it actually doesn't look like his. as for the photograph. the photograph shows jack, unless you are denying it is jack at the 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. i disagree with that as well. he was certainly there and once you're in isis territory, you couldn't leave. he was a muslim inside isis territory. that's what he was certainly guilty of and for many people it is enough to make him guilty of all sorts of things. the salute, is the unity of islam. i'm not a muslim, i don't know what it all means. his trousers he is wearing, i bought them, they are not combat trousers. he has a different t—shirt on. but i don't believe that that photo is not enough to say he is signed up, paid—up member of the caliphate. jack should be able to answer these questions himself. one question that goes even further back, when he had converted to islam and was becoming more and more radicalised. .. i disagree with the term already.

perhaps i'll 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. that's not the situation we're 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're 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 the problem didn't exist. of course, we have heard jack's voice in recent months, he has been interviewed on television by the bbc, itv, by sky news. he has said, and i'm going to quote him directly, "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 considered the possibility of being a suicide bomber. these are things that came from jack's mouth. i have read parts of transcript of that edited interview where he denies being a traitor to great britain. look at the context in which that is happening, from a journalist perspective. so he's being held by non—state actors.

he's brought into a room by men wearing barrack lovers and a pistol. we know he was tortured by isis initially three times and was put on trial in mosul for having opposed them. picked by the kurds and treated fairly well at the beginning because they thought he was a bit of 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. we know he has mentioned electricity, he is locked in a cage, he doesn't see the light for ages. red cross cannot access him, he cannot speak to his family, it cannot speak to a lawyer. then suddenly his cell door opens up and they stick a camera in front of his face and say, are you a traitor or a collaborator? i think that that is duress. —— i think that that is duress.

the bbc interview was conducted by a very experienced correspondent who followed the guidelines and it was clear to him this was not an interview conducted under duress, jack letts wanted to speak to our correspondence. you say you are not in denial, and i read those quotes do, and you say he was not affiliated with or a member of islamic state, it does sound like you are in denial. i'm trying to scratch the context. if you are someone who has been a prisoner for three years and treated really badly, 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 well—respected human rights lawyer clive stafford smith, has been the only person to speak to jack directly in semi private. he believed jack 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 doesn't have access to a lawyer and everyone here believe 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 doesn't have access to anything like that. how do you know what was said to him? they might have said to him we have your wife next door and we will treat her badly if you don't 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 that 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, though, is it? 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 too, 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, all of these years, they have

created this myth called jihadi 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 they were conducted under duress. no idea what is happening in theirjail cells and i think torture happens in jail cells in the middle east. no evidence is solid. if there is, you say about denial, i don't 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 reality of a criminal prosecution brought against yourselves which culminated in the summer of this year with you being found guilty, convicted of one charge under the uk terrorism laws. what impact has that conviction had upon you both? we were found not guilty on the substantial charges of sending money for jack to escape syria. that's been underreported.

there were three charges, all involved sending money to jack? no. one found 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 wasn't, there was a thought that some of it by getting him to give him a pair of glasses, but it was actually to support the poor family in lebanon as well. that charge happened in september but the police ignored that and only added that to the charge later. the two substantive charges 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 is that you were warned repeatedly by the police, i think going back to march 2015, not to send money that could be ending up injack‘s hands because you would have no way of knowing if then it would be added to the coffers of a terrorist organisation?

and we didn't. 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 wasn't 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 that everybody needs to get around is that you were given a trial and you were convicted. you were convicted on this count of entering into a funding arrangement for the purposes of terrorism that contravened the 2000 terrorism act in the uk. and the judge in sentencing said, he was not dogmatic, he said it was one thing for parents to be optimistic about their children. i acknowledge 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, can you accept the judge was right, there were warning signs there for you to see, you ignored them? see — sorry, the charge was under the terrorism act in the uk, the evidential bar is on the ground. you can't beat a charge under section 17 of the terrorism act for funding. it's the opinion of a police officer, that's 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. let us be specific then, whether you, on reflection, agree with thejudge 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 is 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, he was 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 he was trying to escape and that's why the jury accepted that. i think 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 both 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 very fundamental questions about the decisions made during parenting, the degree to which you're in your children's lives, the degree to which you're knowledgeable

of what they are up to. and i am really 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 didn't get through and we wouldn't be in this position now. but i was thinking going even further back, to the way you parent jack, long before he made that decision to fly off to the middle east and ultimately to go to the caliphate? i would never support anything extremist in that way. if i'd thought jack was actually involved with isis or anything, we would never have sent a penny. remember, we didn't send any money to jack, except to help him escape. i can repeat that 100 times. but you did say... i never 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.

on this question of regret, though, john, you said i have two regrets, that when he converted to islam, i didn't walk with him on that path and be more attentive. and the second is i now think his ocd, was worse than ever, that we as parents, addressed. i still believe that exactly. he didn't leave oxford to go to the caliphate. he went to jordan on a holiday and i really believe that's where he went. ito go with him because as an archaeologist it would be a lovely place to go. he then went with his friend 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 for our knowledge of support he went to turkey and then into syria. from there he went into iraq. it doesn't sound like you do feel a degree of personal guilt at all?

well, 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 and islam. i didn't walk on the journey with him in the sense i didn't become a muslim but he thought women had writes, he was not an extremist. in fact, he walked away, the person who supposedly warned us to me was the extremist, who he walked away from. we are almost out of time and i need to ask you this basic question of all. 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. of course it is a horrible question and i wish i didn't have to ask it, but i want to know how you feel about the future? i think right now my greatest fear is he will end up back in the hands of isis and they will torture him again and kill him. they were going to chop his head off

the first time he tried to escape, as they did too many of his friends. so, yeah, i have nightmares every night and i cannot sleep. what do you want me to say? that he is going to make it or that he is not going to make it? he has had nine lives so far, i want him to speak and say the truth. he has been a british and canadian person, let's listen to his story. you don't have to believe anything i say, you think i am in denial. i am not, i'm willing to accept it. but let's 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 don't have a problem with that. i am not but i am on the terrorism register. he is guilty of being a muslim and of going to try to help people. i am sorry because this is an extraordinarily difficult and anguishing subject and we have run out of time. thank you both for agreeing to come onto hardtalk. thank you. thank you very much.

some quiet weather around, at least to start this week, and that's in sharp contrast to what we've had for much of october so far which is an active jetstream, low pressure after low pressure, and rain. in fact, for england and wales, all of the average october rainfall has fallen already this month with 11 days to go. very wet in north—east england. scotland and northern ireland, some way to go to get the average october rainfall and it is here we will see the wettest weather as we go through the week. but as i mentioned earlier, it's quiet to start the week because we have an area of high pressure moving in. that said, there is still low pressure close to east anglia and south—east england for monday, that will bring some rain. in terms of the weather feel to begin the day, chilly in northern ireland but especially in scotland with parts of rural aberdeenshire down to minus three to start the day. a milder start for england and wales

with a lot of cloud around. still this north—easterly breeze with a few showers and outbreaks of rain towards the far south—east, more especially parts of kent, essex, coastal suffolk and norfolk. you may still see a few spots further inland as well. some outbreaks of rain edging towards the northern isles late in the day with a freshening south—westerly wind. temperatures around 10—14 degrees. some sunny spells developing more widely as we go on through the day. it will actually be a chilly night for england and wales going into tuesday morning with winds light here. there will be some fog patches developing. they could be dense in some places, just bear them in mind. out of the tuesday morning commute, high pressure is still here, very few isobars indicating the light winds. a breezier picture for scotland, northern ireland and parts of northern england. a fair amount of cloud around on tuesday. most will be dry but we will have outbreaks of rain in the far north

of scotland, a few sunny spells after that early fog clears away for the rest of england and wales and temperatures are actually edging up a few degrees. taking a look at the big picture for wednesday, low pressure is getting closer and there is also a weak weather front heading towards the south—east. weather fronts are coming in. the more substantial rain from these will be heading into northern ireland and heading into scotland especially into the west, could see a few showers from the other whether front towards east anglia and the south—east. in between the two, there will be this zone here of dry, sunnier weather and temperatures around about the mid— low—teens. that's how the start of the week is looking, quiet to start with, and for mid week, well, it is back to some rain at times in scotland and northern ireland, whereas for england and wales, pressure remains higher so the quieter weather holds on. not much in the way of fresh rainfall on the way but remember, there will be a few fog patches occasionally.

we should bring people back and give them the right to defend themselves. this is the briefing — i'm sally bundock. our top story: a stormy week ahead in westminster. borisjohnson hopes to push ahead with his brexit deal — but will he be blocked?

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