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Somehow we have to rebuild our lives

Based on their lawyers’ own fees — which the advocates have mostly waived — they estimate the case has cost British taxpayers at least $11 million.

“You never relax. You can’t enjoy food, you can’t enjoy a warm shower,” said Letts. “It’s caused so much stress it has destroyed a family. We don’t have any money, so somehow we have to rebuild our lives.”

Letts is forthright in speaking about the prosecution, but his voice falters briefly as he describes the “constant” nightmares, which he said he’s never discussed before publicly.

“I wake up all the time,” he says. “I’m always in some war. It’s often that I get to Jack and he’s lying there and I’ve missed him by five minutes, and he’s dead.”

But freed from the worry of the trial itself and a related gag order, Letts said the couple plan to re-double efforts to get their son — dubbed “Jihadi Jack” by British media — to either the U.K. or Canada, where he also has citizenship.

That likely means the 23-year-old would face justice in one of those countries, Letts acknowledged.

“If Jack has done something wrong, he should be prosecuted, put on trial and put in jail, to keep the country safe and punish him for what he’s done,” the father said. “I don’t have a problem with the concept.”

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Global Affairs Canada had previously seemed eager to help get Jack out of Syria but now refuses to engage with the family, said Letts, born and raised in the Chatham, Ont., area.

In a far-ranging interview — the father’s first with Canadian media since the trial — he also said police initially vowed to work with the couple to repatriate Jack, before turning on them with the terror–funding charges.