Yahoo News Jihadi Jack's parents beg for him to be returned to UK after seeing picture of Isil prisoners in Syrian jail
The parents of "Jihadi Jack" have pleaded for the British government to allow him home after pictures were published of conditions inside the prisons holding Islamic State suspects.
Prisoners were seen lying tightly packed on the floor of a cell wearing orange jumpsuits in footage broadcast on the US network CBS last month.
Jack Letts, a Muslim convert from Oxfordshire was stripped of his UK citizenship after travelling to the Middle East to join Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).
His mother Sally Lane told The Mail On Sunday: "If there is evidence he has committed a crime, then bring him home and put him on trial, and if he is guilty, send him to prison.
"But he has been in this limbo for two-and-a-half years with no end in sight."
She said they believed the man in the photo was their 23-year-old-son, however, the Telegraph has been told the detainee is not Letts. The paper understands the photo is likely a Chechen fighter of similar appearance.
Jack has visible, large scars up his left arm and his stomach from an injury he sustained several years ago in fighting. There are no such marks on the detainee in the picture.
The prison in the CBS News footage contains mostly prisoners detained after the final battle for Isil territory in Baghuz, eastern Syria.
Letts, captured much earlier in 2017, is being held in a smaller prison in better conditions, the Telegraph has been told by sources from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) holding him.
The SDF has in recent weeks allowed media access to the prisons for the first time, in part to put pressure on foreign governments to take back the thousands of their citizens as the group struggles for resources.
Some British citizens captured earlier this year are being held in the prison pictured. ITV News interviewed Aseel Muthana from Cardiff in the cell last week.
Tory MP Crispin Blunt, a former chairman of the Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, visited one of the SDF's many prisons across northern Syria last month and was able to meet Letts.
He told the Mail on Sunday: "He was wearing prison uniform but he couldn't speak freely, because the prison governor was sitting next to us." Mr Blunt said that detaining thousands of Isil captives from 54 countries was imposing an "intolerable burden" on the the SDF.
"The British Government should be taking responsibility for our nationals, not removing citizenship from them," he said. "The situation the photos show is not sustainable. The prisoners need to go through a justice process. And if we can't get the courts to convict them, we have the means to put them under surveillance."
