The mother of a British-born man detained for nearly nine years without trial in Syria has called for his repatriation to the UK or Canada as the US plans to airlift 7,000 Islamic State-linked prisoners from Syria to Iraq.
Sally Lane, the mother of Jack Letts, 30, said she was “frantically trying to find out as much as possible” and that it was unclear if he would face the death penalty in Iraq or remain in Syria – or be sent to Canada or the UK in line with US demands.
Neither the Canadian nor British government has updated her after an outbreak of fighting in Syria last week left the future of Letts and other prisoners from up to 70 countries uncertain. “We’ve heard absolutely nothing. They think we don’t deserve to know,” Lane said.
But she said the UK and others could not easily ignore the issue after the US intervention. “I can’t see that western governments will allow their citizens to be put on trial in Iraq where they have the death penalty and flawed trials.”
She said if the authorities in Canada or the UK wanted to, they could charge Letts with terror offences on home ground as a condition for his return. “If there’s evidence, put them on trial. But there is no evidence,” Lane said.
Oxford-raised Letts travelled to Islamic State-controlled territory in Syria and Iraq aged 18, during the early phases of the terror group’s caliphate. He had converted to Islam aged 16 and dropped out of sixth form because of mental health problems.
He was captured by Syrian Kurdish forces fighting against IS in May 2017 and has been held without trial ever since. British ministers removed his UK citizenship two years later, leaving him a Canadian national, the birth country of his father, John.
Letts’ only contact with the world has been through a handful of television interviews. “I’m not going to say I’m innocent. I’m not innocent. I deserve what comes to me. But I just want it to be … not just haphazard, freestyle punishment in Syria,” he told ITV seven years ago.
His last known location was in a prison near Raqqa in November 2024, when he was interviewed by Canadian television. Then he said he had not been a member of IS and he had rejected their Islamist ideology shortly after he arrived. “I was imprisoned by them three times,” he added.
Lane has not known exactly where her son has been since then and has had no personal contact with him for more than a decade. But she believes he was or is being held in the Gweiran – or Panorama – prison in Hasakah, run by the Syrian Kurds.
Last Wednesday, US Central Command (Centcom) unexpectedly announced it had started a planned airlift of prisoners previously held in Kurdish-run detention centres after the Kurds sustained a succession of battlefield defeats by the Syrian government. About 150 of the most dangerous inmates were flown out that day.
Lane said she did not know if her son was one of those who had been rendered across the border but she believed he probably would not have been. “Jack’s small fry. He’s mostly been held in local prisons. He’s high profile only because he’s been in the news,” she said.
On Sunday Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, spoke to Iraq’s prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, and thanked him for expediting the transfer of IS prisoners to “secure facilities” in Iraq.
The two men also discussed “ongoing diplomatic efforts to ensure countries rapidly repatriate their citizens in Iraq, bringing them to justice”, according to a readout from the US state department after the call.
Last week Centcom said the prisoner transfer would take “days not weeks”. Prisoners would be handed to the Iraqi authorities, Centcom added, but the US military would not confirm if Letts was being transferred from Syria.
Yvette Cooper, the British foreign secretary, said in a BBC interview last Thursday that she had been “in touch” with Rubio about Syria. She said the UK and US had “shared interests in countering terrorism and extremism”, though she did not directly refer to the prisoner transfer.
The UK has repatriated six women and 10 children since 2022. About 55 men, women and children with British links were believed to be in Kurdish detention before last week’s Syrian government offensive. One of those is Shamima Begum, still held at al-Roj camp, in one of the last Kurdish-controlled areas in Syria.
