‘I cried many a night’: The mothers whose sons died fighting for Isis in Syria reveal trauma

‘I remember walking through city streets feeling I was half a person and I was just existing,’ says one mother

Nicola Benyahia and her 19-year-old son Rasheed who died in Syria fighting for Isis (Supplied)

Nicola Benyahia does not know exactly how or where her only son died. All she knows is it happened somewhere along the 599km border between Syria and Iraq.

“The reason they don’t give you more information is because it was a very volatile time,” Ms Benyahia tells The Independent. “There would have been lots of Isis operations going on so they wouldn’t have wanted to risk anything getting out.”

Her life was irreparably changed after she learnt her 19-year-old son Rasheed died after going to fight for Isis in Syria back in 2015. Since then she has set up an organisation called Families for Life, which supports families whose children are radicalised, believing mothers can play a strong role in stopping the process.

“I work with a lot of families who have lost someone or have someone who is in prison in the UK,” the mother-of-five adds. “I want hope for people. As long as you catch it soon enough, it doesn’t need to end like this.”

But sadly for Ms Benyahia and her husband, it is of course too late. The couple, who have been married for 30 years, had briefly separated – living apart for a couple of months after having “marital difficulties” – just before Rasheed unexpectedly disappeared from their Birmingham home. Ms Benyahia fears this may have unsettled her son.

“I thought family life was back on track, but I was seeing pockets of change in him,” she adds. “Instead of being that lively, bubbly person, he turned inwards on himself. Particularly with me, he became a bit more challenging, which again was very unlike him. When there was something about Syria or anything to do with injustice or any conflicts on the news, you would see that excitement. That emotion in him. Something had ignited in him.”

Ms Benyahia described her son, who had been working at an engineering firm, as a “soft individual” whose heartstrings would “easily” be pulled on – adding that the person who got him involved in Isis monopolised on his high levels of empathy.

“We always focus on vulnerabilities, but it can also can be positive emotions – that someone wants to make a change – that extremists exploit for their own gain,” she added. “Young people don’t know the full risk or consequences of things.”

Ms Benyahia, who also has four daughters, noted Rasheed had done an engineering apprenticeship at college after gaining 12 GCSEs, describing him as a very “bright and focused” child who was popular with a lot of friends.

But out of nowhere, Rasheed suddenly vanished in May 2015. Two days after reporting him missing to the police, Ms Benyahia received a WhatsApp message from him. “Please know that I would never put anyone through this if I didn’t know the reward,” read the message. “I ask Allah to protect you and reward you with the highest paradise. Please do not worry, I love you more than ever and again I am sorry.”

Rasheed also told his mother not to go to the police or the media as he warned they would make her “life hell” as well as saying he was not going to have a phone for 30 days. Around two and a half months later, she received a phone call via WhatsApp in which he said he was in Syria.

“It was an incredible five or six months of constant contact,” she recalls. “As much as I could with him with WhatsApps and calls, trying to get a picture of his life out there. The only way I could think of getting him out was by trying to get information out of him. I was trying to get him to change his mind – to see this was wrong.”

She started to see a “shift” in his attitude but around two or three weeks later in November 2015, she received a phone call from a fellow fighter to say Rasheed had been hit by a bomb.

“The fighter was with him when he got killed,” she adds. “It was a five-minute phone call. I asked where. He said somewhere on the Syrian Iraq border but that could be anywhere. We were quiet about it for a year because we were scared of how people would respond.”

Ms Benyahia says she did not tell her brother or sister he had died for six months before then going public to the media after a year.

“When he left, he never said goodbye,” she adds. “We missed out on all those goodbyes which made the grief a lot more complicated. You go into disbelief thinking he must be out there still. I remember walking through city streets feeling I was half a person and I was just existing.”

Yara* also had her life turned upside down when her son was killed after leaving Britain to join Isis in Syria.

“My son was young,” she tells The Independent. “I didn’t suspect anything. He had gone missing. My other child told me he had received a message from my son saying he was in Syria and had joined Isis. I couldn’t contact him.”

Yara says she was left shocked, angry and sad when she found out he had gone to join Isis – saying she just wanted him back with her.

She adds: “Why did he join such a group? He obviously had been brainwashed. My son was young and they targeted him. I cried many a night. After some time someone in the community saw a post on Facebook about my son’s death and came to my house and told me.

“I am left devastated, I have lost my son, my child, my baby. Shame on those who took him from me. I have cried so much. I have been so upset but I have had to keep strong for the rest of my children. This should not happen to anyone else. Had I known what to look out for, I might have been able to save him.”

Around 900 Britons made the trip to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State. While hundreds died there, 450 are estimated to have since come back to the UK.

Sajda Mughal, who is the only Muslim survivor of the 7/7 London bombings, works directly with mothers around the UK to counter terrorism.

Ms Mughal, who is director of the JAN Trust, a charity that supports vulnerable and marginalised women and raises awareness of extremism, says she immediately knew “the best place to start” was with mothers.

The campaigner, who runs a programme called Web Guardians, which supports mothers whose children are radicalised or are at risk, says she met mothers in North London and Portsmouth, whose sons had died after going to Syria to join Isis, who said their sons would not have died if they had gone through the programme before.

“It is very upsetting,” she adds. “You can see how it has affected them. They say there was no graveyard and no funeral and they never had a proper chance to grieve. They have never had that closure. They were very depressed and crying all the time. You could see it. You could feel their pain.”

She says the programme teaches mothers to look out for a change in their child’s language or in who they are engaging with and their online activity.

“Or what have they lost interest in and what are they now interested in,” Ms Mughal adds. “It worries me that other young people are vulnerable and at risk of radicalisation particularly through this lockdown and mothers have not had the opportunity to be part of Web Guardians as it no longer has funding.”

Last autumn, it emerged the number of people referred to the UK’s counter-extremism programme, Prevent, over suspected Islamist radicalisation increased for the first time in four years. In the year to March 2020, almost 1,500 people were considered by Prevent over fears related to Islamist extremism, a rise of 6 per cent from the year before.

“Mothers are key anchors in the house,” Sofia Mahmood, who set up the Empowering Mothers Against Radicalisation and Grooming programme, says. “They spend a lot of time with their children. A mother’s lap is the first form of education a child will get. Having social and emotional intelligence to connect with their children and start conversations means they are able to identify if their behaviour changes quickly.”

Ms Mahmood, who set up a Bradford-based organisation called Empowering Minds, adds: “People underestimate mothers in all walks of life. Ultimately people think because a woman has become a mother, she doesn’t have knowledge anymore but she does. The mother is the person who is going to push the child to grow.”

*Name has been changed to protect identity