
New pictures emerge showing the happy teenager who, only around a year later, would become a militant Islamic extremist.
Their families expressed their anguish after learning that their sons had travelled to join Isis. Khan's mother, who has not been identified, appealed to her only son to come home. She also said the young men had been "brainwashed".
"He is honest, always caring for his family, he always wanted to be there for them. He was one of the best boys a mother could ever want," she said.
"I think they are brainwashed into thinking they are going to help people. I don't know who it is but there is someone behind them, keeping these young, innocent boys, brainwashing them into thinking they are going to help people. There is someone behind them, I don't know who," she told Sky News.
It has emerged that Reyaad Khan grew up close to Abdul Miah, who was jailed along with eight other men in 2012 over a plot to bomb the London Stock Exchange.
Ahmed Muthana, father of Nasser and Aseel, also spoke of his devastation after seeing Nasser on the video.
'Betrayed'
The 57-year-old retired electrical engineer told the Guardian newspaper that he felt his son had betrayed his country. "This is my country. I came here aged 13 from Aden when I was orphaned. It is his country. He was born here in the hospital down the road. He has been educated here. He has betrayed Great Britain," said Ahmed Muthana.
He said that he felt as if a bomb had hit his Cardiff home when he saw the video featuring his son. "I was shocked, I was sad, I cried. My wife collapsed, it feels as if the ground under my feet has disappeared," he said.
They went through a very strange period when they said they were becoming quite serious in their faith and then began to start to expressing certain views.Sheikh Zane Abdo, imam
At the al-Manar centre, where the Muthana brothers and Khan were thought to have worshipped, trustee Barak Albayaty said: "Nasser Muthana was just like any other guy. I was shocked to see him in the video."
Speaking to the Guardian, he said: "But I am sure coming here is not the source of radicalism. We're against going to Syria for the armed struggle and have spelt this out on many occasions. The boys are affected by the internet. It's not just Cardiff, it's all over the UK."
Sheikh Abdul warned that the widespread publicity given to the Isis propaganda video in which the older Muthana brother was featured would encourage other "susceptible" young men to travel to Syria to fight.
He said a "platform" should not have been given to the recruitment video, which also features another Cardiff man Reyaad Khan, who went to school with Nasser Mathana.
"I guarantee that many young people who are very susceptible to this type of message will have watched that video and maybe have been encouraged to now go and follow in the footsteps of Nasser and his brother, which is a real problem, the fact that a platform has been given to this video that really shouldn't have been given," Sheikh Abdo told BBC Breakfast.
Security services estimate that around 500 British Muslims have travelled abroad to fight - most to Syria. They say around 300 have already returned to Britain.
His fears were echoed by Sir Peter Fahy, Greater Manchester Chief Constable and lead on the Prevent counter-terrorism strategy for the Association of Chief Police Officers. He said that the police simply do not know for sure how many British jihadis have travelled abroad.
Richard Barrett, a former head of counter-terrorism at MI6, estimated that around 300 people have come back to the UK after fighting in Syria. But he admitted that it was just a "ballpark figure". He told Channel 4 News that it was only possible to follow a small number of those people closely because of a lack of resources.
Former defence secretary Liam Fox called for intelligence agencies to be allowed to gather more data on British citizens fighting abroad.
No comments:
Post a Comment