“I was constantly trying to find ways of getting him to come back,” the 45-year-old woman from London said.
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“I realised saying ‘I need you to come home’ and that kind of anger was just completely futile, so I stopped doing that.”
Her son, 21, converted to Islam three years ago and secretly left England to join the militant group. He called his mother from Syria to inform her of his whereabouts.
Fighting continues...an explosion
rocks the Syrian city of Kobani during a reported suicide car bomb
attack by the militants of Islamic State (ISIS). Picture: Gokhan
Sahin/Getty Images
Source: Getty Images
Her efforts to persuade him to return were in vain, so she tried a new tactic a few months ago.
“I don’t know if I did it consciously, but I kind of said, ‘You know, you’ve made a decision and I can’t cope living in this flat without you because it is too upsetting so I’m going to work abroad,’” she said.
“I think that took the power out of his rebellion,” she added.
He decided to go back home but was injured in crossfire between two rival factions. She then got on a flight and made her way to Adana, near the Turkish-Syrian border, where she texted him the address of a hotel.
Two weeks later, he turned up.
She welcomed her son home with open arms saying she thinks he went because “he felt upset about the oppression that’s going on there and in his naive mind he thought he could go out there and help”.
While he was questioned upon his return Scotland Yard let him go as he was not deemed a risk.
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