Nicola Benyahia, Founder of anti-radicalisation counselling service Families for Life HARDtalk

Now on BBC News, HARDtalk.

Welcome to HARDtalk.

I'm Stephen Sackur.

After recent terrorist attacks, the UK is preoccupied with questions

about how best to counter the jihadist threat.

For politicians, the focus is on policing, intelligence

and negotiating powers.

My guest today has a different point of view.

Her son Rashid was radicalised in Birmingham, went

to fight with the Islamic State in Syria and was killed

at the age of 19.

She now offers support to other families facing the dangers

of radicalisation at home.

How best to slam the door on the jihadis?

Nicola Benyahia, welcome to HARDtalk.

I wonder what kind of impact the news of the last few weeks

has upon you?

We've seen this spate of horrifying terrorist attacks

in the United Kingdom.

The focus has been on jihadists inside the UK.

This is very personal for you.

I wonder what the impact is?

It's been very difficult, especially because you

have Manchester and then recently London in close proximity.

It really brings it home, how much of a problem

there is and there are days when I think, why am I doing this?

Is anybody listening?

But lately it kind of really brings it home that we need to carry on,

there is a huge problem that we really need to tackle.

Do you feel the resonance, the direct connection,

through your own experience and what you lived

through with your son?

Because there is this phrase that was used in a TV

documentary which happened to feature one of the attackers

in the most recent London attack and the film which was made,

which included him, was called The Jihadi Next Door,

which in a sense your son was.

Yeah, he was a normal boy and nobody would have thought twice

and thought anything.

Like I said, it was like a bolt out of the blue.

He was one of the least...

The person you would least expect it from.

So let's go back to 2015, the spring of 2015.

You say it was a bolt from the blue when 19-year-old Rasheed left home

and simply didn't come back.

I think many people living lives as they do with their own families

will find that hard to understand, that he could flee or escape

to Syria to fight and you have not an inkling that it was in his head?

I completely understand that a lot of people have kind of questioned me

and said, are you sure there wasn't anything you could pick up?

You have to remember, this is over a year and a half period.

There were changes within him and I saw that.

You mean, now that you look back, you believe the process was over

a year and a half?

Yes, and now when I look back, in hindsight, and especially

what I know today about radicalisation, I can pick up those

signs and clues.

But even that is very difficult to decipher what is actually

a teenager going through some kind of teenage anguish

and the radicalisation process.

Naively, we kind of thought, it's just some kind of phase he's

going through and he will come through it.

But especially about six months before he left that was quite

a decisive moment because actually he actually had gone completely back

to his normal self.

He was joining in on family celebrations, the activities

we were doing, he was a much more happy, fun loving boy like before.

That's why it was really like a bolt out of the blue when he went

on the 29th of May.

But, again, that was the turning point in him.

He decided to actually leave and go to Syria at that point.

So we call it the preparation phase of actually going

and what he did was actually turn us away, our eyes away,

from possibly thinking that he may be going there.

He just adopted a passive, cooperative stance to in a sense

disguise what was going on in his head.

All of this seems to me that it matters so much because everyone

from intelligence operatives to academics and sociologists

are trying to understand what goes on to turn

apparently normal, mostly young men into killers.

You know, with this sort of what everyone calls

jihadist, fundamentalist ideology and frankly hate in their hearts.

Are you any closer to understanding it today?

Certainly, from what I've learnt about the process,

I can look back on where it went wrong and what

was going on with my son and I certainly can see

that there were points of possible intervention that I could have

turned it around, now that I have the right tools and knowledge

within me, but I didn't.

Tell me.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Now when you look back, where do you think you missed opportunities?

There were opportunities where he wanted to make a difference.

He wanted to do something within the community and make good.

That's something I always encouraged with my children.

There was one where he wanted to help the Muslims

within our community.

In Birmingham?

Absolutely.

He made an appointment and they didn't turn up.

He had made effort to wake up early, which was unusual for him,

and they didn't turn up and that really disappointed

him and he felt sort of demoralised about it.

I think then the recruiters came in and they gave him

something else to make a difference, and that was in Syria.

So I could have actually, at that point, if I had known

at the time how important it was, I knew it was something he wanted

to do, but I didn't know how significant it was, I could have

gone with him and said, right, we'll do this together,

let's look for an alternative.

But I missed the opportunity, unfortunately.

Let's talk about Islam in all of this.

You are a committed Muslim, I think you converted yourself

when you were 19...

That's correct.

You were brought up in Wales.

You married an Algerian man and together you had children,

including Rasheed, and you brought them up as Muslims.

Rasheed as a teenager, especially in the last year

and a half, did he have fierce theological arguments with you?

Do you think Islam was an important part of what was happening

inside his head, to turn him into this extremist?

I don't think it was Islam that was the turning point

or anything like that.

Like you said, I brought up my children as Muslims,

but because I am a convert, I used to talk about my family

and about the balance of having to be integrated as well.

So I don't think it was anything to do with Islam, I think

it was actually just the fact that somebody had come at a very

vulnerable stage in his life and kind of utilised that.

Particularly again because at the same time

I was going through some difficulties obviously

with the Trojan Horse scandal.

People watching might not know all about that,

but you're a school governor in Birmingham,

where there was the accusation that extreme

fundamentalist ideologues from the Muslim community

were trying to lever in like-minded teachers and governors into schools

to sort of in a sense brainwash the pupils,

and you were a governor at one of the schools?

Yes, I was a governor at that school at the time and had

been for 12 years, and obviously with all of the pressure

and scrutiny that was going on at the time I was under a lot

of, sort of stress or whatever, and back and forth in lots

of meetings.

My son could see that and could see that, I had given my time over those

years and then what happened, I think this was one

of the catalysts, the grievances, a recruiter came in and said,

"look what they're doing to your mother and she has done

all this work".

Let me ask you a blunt question.

You have talked about Rasheed being brainwashed and in a sense groomed.

The idea that Rasheed was the victim, and yet in a sense

Rasheed joined a murderous organisation, committed

to the killing of all those not sharing that particular

brand of extreme beliefs.

He was responsible for his own actions, wasn't he?

Yes, I don't dispute that he made that choice and that was incredibly

difficult for me to comprehend, that he could hurt us so much.

But I think it just...

He was completely under the influence of whoever had

recruited him and under this ideology.

When they are like that it's like being in an abusive

relationship.

You don't see it in front of you.

When people state the obvious, you don't see it.

It takes time to sort of unprogramme them.

So I think that was the difficulty with it, and I don't dispute

that he made that choice and he was ultimately responsible

for that, but also, like I said, I feel he was very

much sort of under the influence of these people.

Do you feel ashamed of him?

I don't feel ashamed of him.

I know I did my best until he was 18 and I did absolutely everything.

He was an incredibly good boy until that point and somebody just

ruined him, absolutely ruined him, in that year and a half,

and that's what's difficult for me.

But for 18 years he was absolutely brilliant, a very intelligent boy,

and it was just very difficult for me to actually sort of...

Sort of have the two and kind of...

..that they're the same person.

I want to move forward because it seems to me there are two

important experiences you've had that could perhaps inform others.

One is about how he was radicalised in the UK and you didn't see it.

The other is how you dealt with him when he got to Syria.

There was a two-month gap when he couldn't or wouldn't

communicate with you, and then you opened up communication

with him when he was with so-called Islamic State inside Syria.

Did you try to persuade him to come home?

Of course.

All I ever wanted was for him to come back.

But I knew as soon as he told me, after there was 2.5 months of him

disappearing and I didn't hear from him, I knew there was a very

slim chance I would be able to get him out alive.

Even if I could change his mind, it was incredibly difficult

to get him out.

Yes, it was really hard.

What was his frame of mind like?

I know you had a loving relationship.

Yeah.

When he spoke to you on the telephone or texted

on WhatsApp, what was he like?

Was he still like your son or somebody you had lost?

That was the incredible thing, he still was.

Because I prepared myself, when he started communicating

with me and throughout that time, especially

within being under Isis, I thought the ideology would be more

entrenched in him and he would get more desensitised towards his

family, but it just didn't happen.

And that's what surprised even people who...

..some researchers I know.

They were completely shocked about that,

that I still managed to keep that bond and that was absolutely

paramount to kind of, keep that bond between him and me.

Which must have made the loss, his death, all the more

difficult.

Did you believe you would see him again, once he was there

and with IS?

No, I knew I was never going to see him again,

to the point where I talked about his death to him.

Throughout those months we talked about his death and how

that was going to get communicated to me,

because I knew from other experiences of other mothers

who have gone through this that they don't get a call and it's

quite often just put on the social media and that's how they find out.

I actually said to my son, please don't do that to me.

Please make sure somebody has the courtesy to phone me and tell me

you are dead, and he promised me.

That is one thing he actually promised me.

This is difficult stuff, but when you read about the young

men who kill themselves or were killed as part of the London

attack or the Manchester suicide bombing, you know,

you have to get your head around these young minds,

where they are in a sense welcoming death.

Yeah.

Do you think Rasheed was welcoming death?

Yes, he was and we spoke about that.

When I talked about how I knew I wasn't going to get him out alive

and I knew he would possibly face his death, he was...

..he was ready for that.

He knew that was possibly what was going to happen.

So he certainly had that frame of mind, definitely.

But I saw a change in him a week or two weeks before he got killed.

He actually shifted.

There was something in him that was clinging towards me...

Clinging, as in softer and more vulnerable?

He wanted my voice constantly to be the last voice he heard whenever

he rang at home.

He spoke to myself and my husband and his sisters, but he always

asked me to come back on the phone because he wanted my voice.

If it was going to be the last call, he wanted my voice to be

the last one he heard.

So he was certainly clingy, and that's because he was sent

fighting for about seven weeks and he had seen things and I think

he saw a lot of things that he wasn't prepared

for, and that's when the shift happened within him.

And I felt at that point, actually,

there was hope, that I may have been able to change his mind,

but unfortunately he got killed a couple of weeks later.

What was the last thing he said to you?

The last thing he said to me was, "I love you".

It was always the one thing I said every time he rang,

that he heard me say "I love you".

Those were always the words I made sure he heard at the end

of the communication.

I didn't want him to feel I was judging him and I was angry

with him, although I was.

I had to contain that.

I wanted to make sure he knew that I still loved him

and he was still my son.

If you could speak to Rasheed today, knowing what you know

about what he did but also knowing what you know now about the ambition

Islamic State has to wreak terror and murder on Britain and other

societies they regard as the enemy, what would you say to Rasheed today?

I don't know what I would say to him to be honest with you,

I don't know if I would have words, I know what he would say to me.

He was a very humble boy and even when he was kind of very...

Sort of if we would have some arguments or anything he was never

someone of saying, "Mumma, I'm sorry.

I know if he could come back today he probably would have said,

"I'm sorry, Mumma, I made a mistake."

Let's talk about the very public debate that is so dominant now

about what to do with this terrorist threat in Western societies,

obviously particularly important and painful discussion

in the UK right now.

You've worked with a gentleman called Daniel Koehler in Germany,

who is an expert on deradicalisation,

and you set up your own Families for Life group

here in the United Kingdom.

Do you believe your experience gives you something important you can

offer to this debate?

Absolutely I do.

I'm not just a trained counsellor by trade anyway but I've also gone

through this, I've actually travelled across Europe and gone

all over the place to get those answers, not just for myself,

and I certainly know I have experienced those tools

and the skills and the knowledge to pass on to other families

and that's what I've been doing over these last months,

is passing that on.

Certainly a lot of families when they've come to me,

they've often actually reported through the anti-terrorist hotline,

which I'm glad of, but they then also have come to me and they've

actually said to me when I've spoken to them and guided them

through stuff to help them understand what's

going on for the love one, they've actually said you're...

They said I just feel validated, I'm not going crazy,

and they felt almost reassured, so I know that's what families want.

It seems to me there's a big trust issue here between many people

in the Muslim community and the authorities,

whether it be the police, the intelligence services, whatever.

Do you see yourself as a sort of bridge between the two or do

you see yourself as an alternative that if Muslims, perhaps in families

like yours, where they're worried about a particular child

within the family or whatever, you could be an alternative place

where they could express their fears and concerns if they don't trust

and will not go straight to the authorities.

I think distrust not just on the side of the community

but on the side of the authorities as well, quite often it is on both

sides, the authorities wonder...

Can they actually...

Are they the right people to be talking amongst their community?

It is trust on both sides and that needs to be bridged.

That is missing?

That needs to be happening, we need to work more closely together.

The one thing I do say is I fear I can bridge that gap

because already through obviously what I've gone through,

and being very open about what I've gone through, I think that

authenticity is what the community can see but then also

the authorities because I work very closely with them and I never hid

anything from them when I worked with them when they were going

through the investigation.

Does it help you or would it help you to have somebody specific

to blame for what happened to Rasheed?

We know young men like him use the Internet and they perhaps find

a lot of the ideology and indoctrination through websites

and through online contact.

We also know, and tell me if this is not true of Rasheed,

that they generally have people within their communities

who are charismatic figures who lead them into this ideology.

But I suppose my question to you is whether you can pinpoint

who was responsible for taking Rasheed into this direction?

Throughout the investigation we've never been able to find out,

neither ourselves or the police, have been able to find out

who recruited Rasheed.

I know certainly it was somebody within the community,

probably a friend, that's from my own instinct

and from what I've been able to pick up.

Like I said, we've never had concrete answers to actually

who recruited him.

If you could find that person, would you try to seek them out?

I would want them absolutely to be brought to justice,

I really would.

Because when you talk about blame, I always say it's obviously

an instinct, you always want when we have these atrocities,

straightaway we want to blame somebody and point the finger.

Is not always helpful because then we don't find solutions,

we're not really putting our heads together and finding

those proper solutions.

Ultimately I just blame Isis, I blame whoever recruited

him, and that...

No matter how many mistakes or things that weren't done

throughout the investigation or leading up to it

when he disappeared, ultimately I just absolutely

blame Isis.

They're the ones...

You know, if they hadn't radicalised him...

Right, but there's a bigger issue here and it's troubling to talk

about it but I think we have to.

We've had a lot of Muslim community leaders in recent days standing up

in Manchester and London saying this is not done in our name,

these people are criminals, they are not proper Muslims

and we will help to bring these people to book.

But, if you look at surveys, one I've season recently

from the Gatestone Foundation in January of 2017, a survey

of Muslim attitudes found of the 3.5 million or so Muslims in the UK,

a substantial number, they said perhaps up to 100,000

of them, a substantial, small but substantial number

expressed sympathy for suicide bomb attacks and the idea

of Muslim jihad.

Now, how are we to make sense of that?

For you as a campaigner against these groups like IS,

how worried are you by statistics like that, or at least polls that

point to that kind of evidence?

I'm very worried.

I've been saying for a while, I don't think even in the Muslim

community people realise what a big problem it is.

I think there is this naivete that has been sensationalised

in the media and it isn't really.

It's going on behind closed doors.

I know certainly since I've been public, obviously because people

know my story, I've had people approach me, and kind of said

of a friend or a neighbour or someone that's actually gone

and they wouldn't have had that conversation had they not

know my story.

I know it's going on possibly more than they are believing.

But going back to blame...

I think, you know, there's a difference

between blame and responsibility.

I think the Muslim community, yes, it's about being more responsible

and we need to do more, absolutely, but that's everybody,

everybody has a responsibility to looking at it, be it the mosque

institutions, schools, colleges, we all have a responsibility

to start looking at this.

A final thought about what you see in front of you, particularly

in a community like Birmingham where some of the tabloid newspapers

and others have looked at the number of jihadis coming from Birmingham

and started calling it jihadi central, it's your community.

I wonder whether you feel when you talk of building bridges

and the need to build trust within the community

and between the community and the police and the authorities,

whether you feel things are going in the right direction

today or not?

I would say I think because we've had the Manchester and,

in a very short time, we had London straight after,

I think it's only now really people have been that shocked that it's

starting to move slowly but it's not at the pace I would like it to be.

I think we need to be moving things a lot more and not become complacent

because every time something like this happens we go through this

thing of being angry and blaming, and then it all goes very quiet

again and we become complacent and when we become complacent we're

not protecting ourselves, we're not secure.

Nicola Benyahia, thank you very much for being on HARDtalk.

Thank you. Thanks a lot.

Hello there.

Many of us have had more than our fair share of wet

and cloudy weather of late, but that certainly hasn't been

the whole story.

Monday brought some sunshine for many places.

That was the scene across the Scottish Islands.

The sunshine was not shared out equally though.

Suffolk seeing a lot of cloud.