RAQQA, SYRIA –
Editor’s note: This is the second of a three-part investigation in which CTV W5’s Avery Haines tells the story of Jack Letts, a Canadian Muslim convert currently in a Syrian jail after he was accused of being a member of the Islamic State. Part two focuses on how W5 found Letts in one of Syria’s secret prisons, and his plea to return to Canada to face justice.
For years, Sally Lane and John Letts have feared their son Jack is dead—and no one has told them.
Their fears lingered in my mind as I travelled for days across a perilous region of northeast Syria, hounding Kurdish officials to honour their promise to let me interview him. By the fifth day, it became clear: they had no idea where their longest-serving foreign inmate was.
Jack Letts, 29, who has been in their custody for seven-and-a-half years without ever having been charged with a crime, was lost in the labyrinth of secret prisons holding suspected ISIS members.
This region is dotted with makeshift Kurdish-run prisons, housing an estimated 10,000 suspected ISIS members from more than 70 countries.
(CTV W5)
Without legal systems to process foreign nationals, Kurdish authorities insist it is the responsibility of detainees’ home countries to take them back.
But many countries, including Canada, have refused to do so, citing national security risks. It’s created a global stalemate, with detainees like Letts caught in indefinite detention.
On day eight, my local field producer, Mustafa al Ali, finally got the call we had been waiting for: they had found Jack Letts. Getting to him, however, was not without risk. He had been transferred to a secret prison on the outskirts of Raqqa. We travelled six hours through known ISIS hotspots, passing dozens of checkpoints along the way.
Kurdish officials refused to name the prison or provide an address. Instead, a car met us on the outskirts of the former ISIS capital. We followed it to an industrial compound—an unmarked prison.
Inside, we were led into the basement and told to set up our cameras in a soundproof interrogation room with black padded walls. I stood outside as masked guards shuffled a blindfolded and handcuffed Jack Letts down the hallway. Barefoot and bewildered, Letts was guided into our makeshift studio.
His face lit up when I told him I was from Canada, and he broke down when I explained I had called his mother to let her know he was alive. Through tears, he said: “I saw her in a dream a few days ago. I am sorry… Wait, it wasn’t a few days ago. I think it was today or yesterday. It was… It was good to see her. I’ll try and pull myself together.”
I asked why he was barefoot, but with his guard sitting behind him, he made it clear he couldn’t tell me. He shook his head—no—when I asked if he had been told who I was or why I was there.
Jack Letts being led in, barefoot, by a Syrian prison guard for his interview with W5.
Letts said he was happy to be interviewed, though I suspect he had little choice. He was pulled from his cell and placed in front of me, unable to speak freely without fear of punishment. At one point, in barely a whisper, he said: “I wish I could speak outside of prison. That would be good.”
Jack Letts has been here so long he has forgotten many English words, often asking his captors for translations.
From Oxford to ISIS territory
(Supplied photo)
Born to a Canadian father and a British mother, Jack was a dual British-Canadian citizen, until he was stripped of his U.K. citizenship in 2019. He still has Canadian citizenship.
Once a suburban teenager in Oxford, England, Letts was captured trying to flee ISIS territory in 2017. He was stripped of his British citizenship in 2019 after being accused of joining ISIS. For the past seven-and-a-half years, he has been trapped in a detention limbo.
Canada is now his only hope for a way out of Syria. Despite protests, court challenges, and petitions organized by his parents, the Canadian government has shown no interest in repatriating Letts or the other eight known Canadian male detainees being held in the region.
Letts converted to Islam at 16. In 2014, when he turned 18, he became one of an estimated 50,000 foreigners who went to Syria, many lured by slick ISIS propaganda. The terror group portrayed itself as the only force capable of deposing Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whose brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests devastated the predominantly Muslim country.
“Was I an ISIS member? No,” he told me. “There’s a lot of things I said a long time ago because I was scared. I can’t say everything because I’m sitting in prison. Maybe this is my last chance to get the truth across.”
Diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder as a teenager, Letts says he became consumed by the plight of Syrian Muslims during the country’s descent into civil war.
“I was obsessed,” he admitted. “I would spend hours watching videos of people being blown to pieces. I felt like a hypocrite, sitting in a comfortable house doing nothing.”
A journey into darkness
‘There’s a lot of things I said a long time ago because I was scared,’ Jacks Letts says in an interview at a Syrian prison (W5)
Letts claims his journey to Syria began with the naive belief that he could help.
“I spoke to people who gave me the impression that ISIS wasn’t what people said it was,” he explained. “I know it sounds ridiculous. ISIS being who ISIS are, but they said that they were the only people who are really fighting for Syrians. But as soon as I got there, I realized they weren’t what I thought. They said we had to go to a training camp. And I said I am not going to pledge allegiance… and I left them straight away.”
He described becoming an enemy of ISIS after rejecting their ideology inside their territory. “I was imprisoned by them three times. They told me they were going to kill me but didn’t. I lost more than 20 close friends to them. I still can’t believe I survived.”
Avery Haines in one of the abandoned ISIS prisons (W5)
To understand the horrors of ISIS detention, we visited one of their abandoned prisons. Narrow, suffocating cells held chilling remnants of past occupants. Graffiti scrawled in English hinted at foreign captives who rarely left alive.
A life in limbo
For Kurdish authorities, Letts is part of a larger problem: thousands of foreign ISIS suspects remain in detention, unclaimed by their home countries. Without British citizenship, Canada is now his only hope. But there is little political or public support.
Human rights advocates argue that leaving detainees like Letts in indefinite detention violates international law and erodes the rule of law: innocent until proven guilty. They also warn that these prisons, often under-resourced and overcrowded, risk becoming breeding grounds for further extremism.
“Let me rot in a prison in Canada,” Letts pleaded. “At least I could see my mom once a year.”
He acknowledged that returning to Canada would mean facing justice. “I have no problem if they put me in prison for 100 years.”
Watch “Avery Haines Investigates,” a special one-hour documentary airing Saturday, Nov. 30 at 7 p.m. on CTV. It will also be posted on CTV W5’s official YouTube channel
