Jack Letts, a former A-level student, from Oxford.
Photo: Handout
LONDON: The Muslim convert dubbed "Jihadi Jack", who is being held in northern Syria after joining the Islamic State (IS) group, on Monday said that Britain's decision to revoke his citizenship was "not something I recognise."
Jack Letts, 24, who was a dual UK-Canadian national, was captured by Kurdish forces in Syria in 2017 and is languishing in jail there, despite saying in a media interview earlier this year he would like to return to Britain.
But in a recent interview with ITV News Letts said that "stripping me of British citizenship and not stripping me is the same thing at the end of the day. It's not something I recognise."
"I never grew up being accepted as a British person anyway," he added.
UK strips citizenship from dual national 'Jihadi Jack'
"But, in the same way, Britain hasn't helped me for two and a half years, Canada has done nothing. I always thought Canada was a better country, I had this illusion."
Canada's Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale dashed hopes of a swift return to Canada for Letts, posting to Twitter that the government had "no legal obligation to facilitate" the return of Canadian citizens detained in Syria.
Goodale earlier confirmed that the United Kingdom had "revoked the citizenship of Jack Letts", expressing disappointment at the move.
"It is a crime to travel internationally with a goal of supporting terrorism or engaging in terrorism," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters Monday.
"And that is a crime that we will continue to make all attempts to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law."
Letts converted to Islam at the age of 16 and fled his home in Oxfordshire, central England, two years later to join IS.
"I'm not innocent," he told ITV News earlier this year. "I deserve what comes to me. But I just want it to be... appropriate... not just haphazard, freestyle punishment in Syria."
'Jihadi Jack' slams media for demonising young Britons who convert to Islam
His Canadian father and British mother were convicted in a UK court in June of funding terrorism by sending him a small amount of money during his time in Syria but were spared jail.
In an interview on British television Sunday evening, Letts' parents accused the British government of "shirking responsibility".
"It was a real shock that your government can do this to you without any form of redress or discussion or way of actually contacting Jack, given that he's being held incommunicado and has no access to a lawyer," his mother Sally Lane, 57, said.
"Jack and other people are now in a legal black hole," she said, adding that she has been told that the Canadian government has been trying to bring Jack back.
The Mail on Sunday also reported that there were concerns that the issue could overshadow a meeting between Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Britain's new leader Boris Johnson at the G7 summit in France next weekend.
The decision is the latest instance of Britain revoking the citizenship of its nationals who went to join the IS group's self-proclaimed caliphate.
In February it faced criticism after stripping Shamima Begum, a teenager who travelled to Syria to marry an IS fighter, of her British citizenship.
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