Friend or Foe? Walsall schoolmates' Jihadi baby smuggling plot

Both men were part of a group from Walsall who successfully travelled to Syria from the town during 2014.

During the Old Bailey trial, it was revealed they were part of a group of six who then planned to smuggle pregnant women and young children to the war-torn country.

Petty, a church minister's son, travelled to Syria to train as a 'soldier' telling his family he was not happy in England.

The 25-year-old sent a message to his Walsall family saying he had 'always dreamed of living in an Islamic state'. Giving evidence at the trial, his mother Sue Boyce wept as she said she had hoped the email was a 'nasty joke'.

But more than a year later she identified his dead body on a video shown to her by security services, the jury heard.

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Isaiah Siadatan – who is the half-brother of The Apprentice show winner Yasmina Siadatan – left his wife and two children behind to join schoolfriend Petty in Syria.

Siadatan's wife Kerry Thomason admitted helping him leave the country after failing in her own bid to make it Syria.

She attempted to board a flight to Turkey, but her and her children's passports were seized by police and she was detained.

In his letter attached to his email to the Express & Star, Aslam claims to have appealed to stop both Siadatan and Petty joining ISIS in Syria.

He said: "During MI5/MI6's and the police's study of the emails Mr Jacob Petty sent to his family, I am sure that they are fully aware he told them that we had a colossal argument because I made it perfectly clear to him that I wholly disagreed with his abhorrent intention to join the terrorist group ISIS.

"Once he made me aware of it here in Turkey, and that once he told me of his intention I tried my upmost to stop both him and Mr Isaiah Siadatan from joining them, and that even once they had – I tried my very best to convince them to come back to Turkey."

Aslam also attempts to defend his and Petty's journey to Kenya in 2011 – when Petty and Siadatan's brother Omar were arrested and deported for travelling too close to the Somali border.

Aslam said: "I had told Mr Jacob Petty about the delightful time I had visiting my sister in Kenya the previous year, so when I planned to visit her again I suspected nothing when he asked to join me, and I believed his claim of simply wishing to see for himself everything I had told him about the country.

"When I became suspicious of his true intentions I did not want anything to do with him and I returned to the UK as quickly as possible."

Petty, of Slaney Road, Walsall, went under the name of Abu Yaqoob Britany when he travelled to Syria via Athens and Cairo.

In October 2014, he sent an email saying he was going to Syria to be an aid worker.

But two days later on October 26 he sent a second message admitting that he had joined ISIS.

Mrs Boyce told jurors her son then briefly kept in contact through email and also through WhatsApp messages.

She said she contacted MI5 because initially she could not get through to police to tell them about it.

Mrs Boyce and her husband were shown a video in October last year of a dead man which they identified as their son.

Petty had attended Blue Coat CofE Secondary School in Walsall but had converted to Islam when he was 15 or 16 years old, Mrs Boyce told the court.

But his email contact with the family ended in December two years ago. He was killed in February last year, but was not identified until October.

Siadatan is also believed to be dead. He flew to Cologne from Birmingham and onwards to Istanbul where he made his way to the Syrian/Turkish border to allegedly meet up with Aslam and Petty.