Should we help bring him home.?

How old is the son?

He is only 21 now....left here in 2014.
I have just been trying to think how this could happen - my children were independently minded but there were always discussions about most things....and they both developed even handed views on the world. We had a similar background/location to this family and neither of my children would have had sympathies or interest with any terrorist group and I just cannot get my head around how this young lad could leave home, leave the country and end up where he did.

Does he genuinely want to come home/back to UK? Can we risk admitting someone who may well have been further radicalised and have seen and potentially done awful things. I know I'm sceptical but he won't be a young innocent any more.

I hate to be cynical and I'm sure to be shot down but I wonder if they are desperate to get him back before the Government shuts the door, which it surely must, on radicalised individuals returning from the Middle East to promote their ideologies in this country again. I feel for his mother, but can't imagine that they didn't have any idea if the influences he was coming under before he left, even if they weren't from his home environment.

Teenagers can be very funny (peculiar) the surging mix of hormones, not just testosterone, can leave them as mixed up and as uncertain, as some women who have a difficult menopause.

We see this with children who commit suicide, get mixed up with drugs. In a confused and difficult world, especially if there are cultural dissonances, sects and political cliques that offer simple and strong answers to the complexity of life can be very attractive.

If the home atmosphere is open to new ideas, as HildaW describes then the children will definitely keep such thoughts to themselves, say they are visiting friends, having sleep-overs. No different really to children groomed online and disappearing to meet their young handsome boyfriend (they suppose) or eloping with a teacher.

The parents of these children may well have no inkling what is happening. An interest in Islam and even conversion do not equate with terrorism.

There is a case in Oxford, an English lad, about 18 converted to Islam, went to Syria several years ago thinking he was going to live in a Caliphate that was the pure muslim message on earth. He soon realised his mistake. There is no evidence that he was involved in the fighting. He seems to be a pacifist, or near it, and risked his life to get out of the ISIS area. He is now in a Kurdish prison and his parents have asked for help getting him home.

You do not stop loving and caring for your children because they have acted like idiots and got themselves into deep trouble. Were I in their shoes,I too would be begging for help.

If the FO do help, I hope they will draw up an account of the cost of their negotiations and his rescue and present it to the lad and show just what the cost of his naivety was,and expect that some of it must be repaid when he has a job at a rate, I do not know, say of £25 a week.

He might not want to come home.

Well said, MOnica. Teenagers are indeed strange creatures at times.

Does he actually want to come home I wonder?

I think he has said he wants to come home. He had tried to leave and hasn't been heard from since. I think his parents want our government to try and trace his whereabouts.

The only thing I can add is...
'Once a parent always a parent'
I would be wanting mountains shifted if it was my child or my grandchild.

Good post Monica and I agree with you.

Teenagers flew in the battle of Britain. Are they somehow less mature now?

Yes Jane I really think that 18 year olds were more mature back in 1940.Not the fault of todays teenagers, but they were not cossetted or encouraged to be childish back then, many had been working from age 14.

Yes, and the word 'teenager' hadn't even been invented then.

Young men then although a rose by any other name etc. Same thing.
I feel for the parents but it's asking a lot for the British government to try to locate him and get him out of there. Its a hard lesson. Its probably a good thing to have this reported in the media as it may at least have a deterrent effect on others.

I am
This case which M0nica quotes
There is a case in Oxford, an English lad, about 18 converted to Islam, went to Syria several years ago thinking he was going to live in a Caliphate that was the pure muslim message on earth. He soon realised his mistake. There is no evidence that he was involved in the fighting. He seems to be a pacifist, or near it, and risked his life to get out of the ISIS area. He is now in a Kurdish prison and his parents have asked for help getting him home

is surely the subject of this thread.
It may of course all be academic as I understand nobody has seen or heard anything of him for I think 12 days.
I wonder if this is a case of "right on" libertarian parents allowing him too much freedom of choice without the moral compass he needed to choose his path.
The parents also face prosecution for sending him money "to aid terrorism".
Bring him home? I fear the powers that be are damned if they do, and damned if they don't.

My father signed up for the RAF on his 18th birthday. After training, he became a bomber pilot and miraculously survived. I asked him whether he was ever frightened, given that so many bomber pilots died and he said he didn't think abut it. The important thing was that he did his duty and there was a certain amount of glamour attached to being a pilot. I think my father was ready to die for a cause - as these young men seem to be.

In a word.... no .

The FCO doesn't do this kind of thing. They can't get anyone out of prison, all they can do is try to ensure that the person is properly treated. In the case of Syria, they probably have no one on the ground anyway as it's so dangerous.

No

That is in fact the case suedonim they say they are unable to offer any consular facilities in Syria.
If I knew the lad or was his mum I would move heaven and earth, but I wonder if his white middle class Oxford background is what is arousing the "sympathy". What if he were a less well educated lad from Leeds of Asian origins?
No consolation to say this, either but IMO his parents must take some of the responsibility for his actions.

There is a case in Oxford, an English lad, about 18 converted to Islam, went to Syria several years ago thinking he was going to live in a Caliphate that was the pure muslim message on earth. He soon realised his mistake. There is no evidence that he was involved in the fighting. He seems to be a pacifist, or near it, and risked his life to get out of the ISIS area. He is now in a Kurdish prison and his parents have asked for help getting him home.

I was just about to post the same as you MawBroon, yes surely the young man referred to is the subject of the OP.

Now, British boy goes to Syria to support IS, his parents have been charged with supplying him with money to support terror and are also being charged with eight terror offences themselves and are remanded in custody and we are supposed to feel some sympathy?
Why?

I forgot to mention that he is white, well-educated and from Oxford. Is that supposed to make a difference?
An English lad covers so many young men of different appearance and cultures in this country most of whom are not rushing off to join IS and become terrorists.

I was listening to R4 in the car today and apparently he is being held in solitary confinement in a Kurdish prison in Syria.

Now - ask yourselves - if it was reported that this had happened to a young British Asian lad who had gone off to join IS would you feel the FO should help or not?
Would your posts still show the same degree of sympathy for his 'plight'?

I totally agree with you Jalima1108 .