When 19-year-old Rasheed Benyahia bounced out the door of his Birmingham home on the morning of 29 May 2015, it felt like any other day to his unsuspecting family.

Dirty socks lay on his bedroom floor, his toothbrush was by the sink. Only the teenager’s rucksack full of equipment for his electrical engineering apprenticeship was missing.

But that was not Rasheed’s destination. He was on his way to the airport to catch a flight to Turkey and onwards to Syria, to join the so-called Islamic State.

Nicola Benyahia and her son Rasheed Benyahia, who was killed fighting for Isis aged 19 in 2015 (Supplied)

“He kissed me goodnight the night before and bantered with me like he normally did when he went to his bedroom,” recalls his mother, Nicola Benyahia.

“He always got up early so I didn’t think anything of it until it was the evening and he didn’t come back home. Even if he was 10 minutes late he would always ring me.”

When Rasheed didn’t respond to calls and messages, his parents and four sisters went into overdrive trying to find him, checking with friends, hospitals and the police, who tried to assure the family that the teenager would return.

Three days later, a message arrived from Rasheed, saying he was “very safe and in good hands”.

“Please know that I would never put anyone through this if I didn’t know the reward,” it read. “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.”

Timeline: The emergence of Isis Show all 40 1 /40 Timeline: The emergence of Isis Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2000 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (pictured here) forms an al-Qaeda splinter group in Iraq, al-Qa’eda in Iraq. Its brutality from the beginning alienates Iraqis and many al-Qaeda leaders. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2006 Al-Zarqawi is killed in a U.S. strike. Al-Zarqawi’s successor, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, announces the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2009 Still al-Qaeda-linked ISI claims responsibility for suicide bombings that killed 155 in Baghdad, as well as attacks in August and October killing 240, as President Obama announces troop withdrawal from Iraq in March. Getty Images Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2010 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi becomes head of ISI, at lowest ebb of Islamist militancy in Iraq, which sees last U.S. combat brigade depart. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2012 In Syria, protests (pictured here starting in Daree) have morphed into what president Assad labelled a “real war” with emergence of a coalition of forces opposed to Assad’s regime. Syria group Jabhat al-Nusra are among rebel groups who refuse to join, denouncing it as a “conspiracy”. Bombings targeting Shia areas, killing more than 500 people, spark fears of new sectarian conflict. Sunni Muslims stage protests across country against what they see as increasingly marginalisation by Shia-led government. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2013 Al-Baghdadi renames ISI as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or Isis, as the group absorbs Syrian al-Nusra, gaining a foothold in Syria. In response, al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri (Bin Laden’s successor) concerned about Isis’ expansion orders that Isis be dissolved and ISI operations should be confined to Iraq. This order is rejected by al-Baghdadi. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - January Isis fighters capture the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, giving them base to launch slew of attacks further south. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Isis declares itself the Caliphate, calling itself Islamic State (IS). The group captures Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city; Tal Afar, just 93 miles from Syrian border; and the central Iraqi city of Tikrit. These advances sent shockwaves around the world. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Around the same time Isis releases a video calling for western Muslims to join the Caliphate and fight, prompting new evaluations of extremists groups social media understanding. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Isis take Baiji oil fields in Iraq - giving them access to huge amounts of possible revenue. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - August James Foley is executed by the group as concerns grow for second American prisoner, fellow reporter Steven Sotloff. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - August Obama authorises U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, helping to stall Isis’ along with action by Kurdish forces following the deaths of hundreds of Yazidi people on Mount Sinjar. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Isis release video showing Steven Sotloff’s murder prompting Western speculation his executioner is same man who killed Mr Foley. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Obama tells us that America “will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country” EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Isis release a video appearing to show David Haines, who was captured by militants in Syria in 2013, wearing an orange jumpsuit and kneeling in the desert while he reads a pre-prepared script. It later shows what appears to be the aid worker's body. Rex Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Peshmerga fighters scrabble to hold positions in the Diyala province (a gateway to Baghdad) as Isis fighters continue to advance on Iraqi capital. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - October Aid worker Alan Henning is killed. Self-imposed media blackout refuses to show images of him in final moments, instead focuses upon humanitarian care. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - October Isis raise their flag in Kobani, which had been strongly defended by Kurdish troops. The victory goes against hopeful western analysis Isis had overextended itself, while alienating much of the Muslim population through the murder of Henning. Victory causes fresh waves of Kurdish refugees arriving in Turkey. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - November American hostage, who embarced values of Islam, Peter Kassig and 14 Syrian soldiers are shown meeting the same fate as other captives. But intelligence agencies will be poring over the apparently significant discrepancies between this and previous films. Seramedig.org.uk Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis has released a video revealing the murder by burning to death of a Jordanian pilot held by the group since the end of December 2014. Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis militants have released videos which appear to show the beheading of Japanese hostages Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February American aid worker, Kayla Mueller was the last American hostage known to be held by Isis. She died, according to her captors, in an airstrike by the Jordanian air force on the city of Raqqa in Syria, though US authorities disputed this. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis militants have posted a gruesome video online in which they force 21 Egyptian Coptic Christian hostages to kneel on a beach in Libya before beheading them. Egypt vowed to avenge the beheading and launched air strikes on Isis positions. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February The British Isis militant suspected of appearing in videos showing the beheading of Western hostages has been named in reports as Mohammed Emwazi from London. Rex Features Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - March Isis triple suicide attack has killed more than 100 worshippers and hundreds of others were injured after the group members targeted two mosques in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Iraqi forces have claimed victory over Isis in battle for Tikrit and raised the flag in the city. EPA/STR Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Isis has claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan that killed at least 35 people queuing to collect their wages and injured 100 more. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Isis’ media arm released a 29-minute video purporting to show militants executing Ethiopian Christians captives. The footage bore the extremist group’s al-Furqan media logo and showed the destruction of churches and desecration of religious symbols. A masked fighter made a statement threatening Christians who did not convert to Islam or pay a special tax. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis has been "incapacitated" by a spinal injuries sustained in a US air strike in Iraq. He is being treated in a hideout by two doctors from Isis’ stronghold of Mosul who are said to be "strong ideological supporters of the group". Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis has also claimed responsibility for killing 300 of Yazidi captives, including women, children and elderly people in Iraq AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis attack on Prophet Mohamed cartoon contest in Texas was its first action on US soil. Two gunmen were shot and killed after launching the attack at the exhibition. Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi have been named as the attackers at the Curtis Culwell Centre arena in Garland. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis’s deputy leader, Abu Alaa Afri, a former physics teacher who was thought to have taken charge of the deadly terrorist group, has been killed in a US-led coalition airstrike. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May US special forces have killed a senior Isis leader named as Abu Sayyaf in an operation aiming to capture him and his wife in Syria. Getty Images Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Iran-backed militias are sent to Ramadi by the Iraqi government to fight Isis militants who completed their capture of the city. Government soldiers and civilians were reportedly massacred by extremists as they took control and the army fled. Charred bodies were left littering the city streets as troops clung on to trucks speeding away from the city. Ramadi is the latest government stronghold to fall to the so-called Islamic State, despite air strikes by a US-led international coalition aiming to stop its advance in Iraq and Syria. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis rounded up civilians trapped in Palmyra and forced them to watch 20 people being executed in the historic city’s ancient amphitheatre. The Unesco World Heritage site was overrun by militants, threatening the future of 2,000 year-old monuments and ruins. Thousands of Palmyra’s residents fled but many are still living within the city walls, while the UN human rights office in Geneva said it had received reports of Syrian government forces preventing people from leaving until they retreated from the city. Getty Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May A group of Isis-affiliated fighters have captured a key airport in central Libya. The militants took control of the al-Qardabiya airbase in Sirte after a local militia tasked with defending the facility withdrew from their positions. Affiliates of Isis, already control large parts of Sirte, the birthplace of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and a former stronghold of his supporters. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June The US Air Force has destroyed an Isis stronghold after an extremist let slip their location on social media. According the Air Force Times, General Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command, said that Airmen at Hulburt Field, Florida, used images shared by jihadists to track the location of their headquarters before destroying it in an airstrike. Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Kurdish forces captured a key military base in a significant victory in Raqqa as well as town of Tell Abyad. YPG fighters, backed by US-led airstrikes and other rebels, consolidated their gains, when they seized the key town on the Syria-Turkey border. They are now just 30 miles to the north of Raqqa and have cut off a major supply route deep inside Isis-held territory. Ahmet Silk/Getty Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Isis has released gruesome footage claiming to show the murder of more than a dozen men by drowning, decapitation and using a rocket-propelled grenade as it seeks to boost morale among its fanatical supporters. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Isis has begun carrying out its threat to destroy structures in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, blowing up at least two monuments at the Unesco-protected site as Syrian government troops made advances on the Islamist’s positions. AFP

Mrs Benyahia did not hear from her son for an agonising 64 days, until he called with a confirmation that the family feared. He was in Syria.

“As soon as I knew where he was, I knew then I was never going to see him again,” Mrs Benyahia said, her voice wavering.

“I knew that even if he wanted to come back he couldn’t, every day it was more likely that he would never come back.

“I was just waiting for him to be killed. My grief started as soon as I knew where he was. I had lost him already.”

Rasheed was in Raqqa, the capital of Isis’ self-declared caliphate, and had undergone the terror group’s compulsory training ahead of battle against Syrian forces and rebel groups.

Contact became regular but details were sparse and conversations were sometimes interrupted, leading Mrs Benyahia to believe they were monitored.

Rasheed Benyahia, 19, in the first picture sent to his family after he joined Isis in Syria in May 2015 (Supplied)

In September, Rasheed disappeared for a month. When he came back online, he told his father he had “been to visit Bashar al-Assad”.

“It meant he had been fighting Syrian forces,” Mrs Benyahia said. “He never told me, he was very protective because I was his mum and he didn’t want me to get worried and upset.”

The last time Rasheed called his family, he had been summoned to Raqqa’s central mosque to receive new orders. Weeks later, they received news of his death from another Isis fighter calling their son by the nom de guerre Abu Huraira al-Britani.

“He died on 10 November but we didn’t find out until the 20th because they were fighting and couldn’t get hold of a phone,” his mother said.

“Whoever this guy was phoned the house line. My husband answered and he told him my son had been killed…he paid the consequence of his choice.”

The man claimed Rasheed died in an air strike by the US-led coalition in the Iraqi province of Sinjar. He had not reached his 20th birthday.

In their grief, the family were also feeling intense shame. They received news of Rasheed’s death a week after Isis militants massacred 130 people in the Paris attacks.

Rasheed Benyahia, 19, joined Isis in Syria in 2015 (Supplied)

“It was difficult to carry the burden without telling people he was dead,” said Mrs Benyahia, pausing. “I don’t want other people to go through what I did.”

Both Rasheed’s family and the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit have been trying to piece together how the teenager became radicalised – and who instructed him on how to reach Isis.

Mrs Benyahia, from Wales, converted to Islam as a young woman and later married Rasheed’s father, who is originally from Algeria. They brought up their children as Muslims, observing Ramadan and Friday prayers, but describe themselves as liberal.

His mother remembers Rasheed as a gentle and naive boy who looked young for his age.

“When he confirmed he was in Syria, I found it difficult to comprehend because he was such a queasy person,” she said. “He couldn’t look at vomit or blood – he couldn’t watch Casualty.”

Rasheed’s Instagram account provides a glimpse of the teenager she remembers, showing him joking with friends and indulging his love of parkour.

The posts stopped shortly before the start of his transformation in 2014, when he switched to a different mosque and became increasingly religious, asking his parents to join a local “dawah” conversion group.

Rasheed Benyahia practicing parkour with friends in Birmingham before being radicalised (Instagram)

His mother refused permission. He then asked her to shorten his trousers – a sign of deepening Islamic observance. At the same time, political debates were turning into family arguments amid news of Isis’ atrocities and growing “caliphate”.

Rasheed’s father cautioned that the group did not represent Muslims but the teenager was angered by civilian deaths in Syria, calling for action. His demands stopped in winter 2014, leaving his family temporarily reassured.

They had other problems. Mrs Benyahia was a trustee at Birmingham’s Park View Academy – one of the schools at the centre of the “Trojan Horse” scandal – and stood down with other trust members in July that year.

Mrs Benyahia admits she missed signs of her son’s radicalisation, assuming he was gaming in the hours spent alone in his room, when she now believes he was in contact with online recruiters.

“There is no question that he was instructed to the letter,” she said. “I don’t know who recruited him and I hope one day that I can connect the dots."

After Rasheed’s death she contacted Daniel Koehler, director of the German Institute on Radicalisation and Deradicalisation Studies who helped found a European anti-extremism group for jihadis’ families.

Meeting other mothers inspired Mrs Benyahia to create her own group in the UK, Families for Life, where she is using her counselling training and personal experience to help other parents spot the signs of radicalisation and cope if, as with her son, the realisation comes too late.

Rasheed Benyahia, who was killed fighting for Isis aged 19 in 2015 (Supplied)

“I wanted to set up a safe place for families to come and talk,” said Mrs Benyahia. “Somebody needs to speak out and we need to be talking about this.”

As well as offering a helpline and counselling, the organisation acts as an online resource for concerned parents, listing warning signs and offering guidance.

Asked how he would respond to anger at the idea of a supporting terrorists’ families, Mr Koehler said experiences must be shared to prevent them from repeating.

“Radicalisation can happen to any family of any background,” he added.

“Isis has turned terrorist recruitment into a mass product. These families are up against a massively superior enemy that is reaching in using advanced psychological warfare.”

Mr Koehler acknowledged that some parents may be radical themselves but said those approaching his group are the “95 per cent” who want to fight their children’s growing extremism.

“Someone often recognises that radicalisation process very early but don’t trust the police, don’t know what to do, don’t know what to call,” he said.