ISIS ‘white widow’ Sally Jones’ son Jojo, 12, was considered ‘collateral damage’ when the CIA sent a drone to kill his Brit mum
WHITE Widow Sally Jones' 12-year-old son Jojo was considered “collateral damage” when the CIA sent a drone to obliterate his Brit mum.
The infamous ISIS recruiter, who regularly used her son as a human shield, was blown up by Hellfire missiles on the border between Syria and Iraq in June.
Her son is also believed to have been killed in the attack after Donald Trump relaxed rules on drone strikes.
Trump removed the requirement of “near certainty” that no civilian bystanders will be killed in strikes earlier this year.
Sources told that Jojo's death would have been avoided at all costs, but the Americans assessed the possibility of him being with his mother as “collateral damage”.
The UK government is expected to be pressed on whether British intelligence was used to avoid Jojo getting caught up in the attack.
Clive Lewis, chairman of the all parliamentary group on drones, has demanded to know what information was shared between British and American intelligence services.
He said the strike raised “alarm bells” and he questioned what measures were in place to prevent Jojo being killed.
Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said Jones was a "legitimate target".
He warned that Brits who join ISIS make themselves “a legitimate target and you run the risk every hour of every day of being on the wrong end of an RAF or a US missile”.
It came as a new picture emerged of Jojo dressed in the green ‘cubs of the caliphate’ uniform in Raqqa in 2016, when he would have been 11.
Jones left her home in Chatham, Kent, with her son in 2013 to join ISIS.
Jojo is believed to have been brainwashed by ISIS - undergoing lessons in radical Islam and firearms and martial arts training.
Last year his heartbroken grandparents identified a boy who featured in an ISIS execution video as him.
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Standing behind a row of kneeling prisoners in orange boiler suits, the boy brandished a pistol moments before the men were murdered.
It was a world away from his Kent childhood, with relatives describing him as a gentle animal-loving lad. One said: “He would never even tread on an ant."
His granddad Terry Lynch later told The Sun: "I couldn’t believe it, I feel so sad. That is a wasted life. His life is finished.
"There is no way he can come back to the normal world. It’s terrible. Unbelievable. I feel really guilty because the boy used to say to me, ‘Grandad, can I stay with you?’
"He was a lovely little boy, gorgeous. He’s a lost soul, you are never going to get him back. How do you ask him to come back to this country and join in with ordinary kids playing football on the street when he has a Kalashnikov?
"Within two weeks he could take a Kalashnikov to pieces and rebuild it."
Jones is understood to have been zapped” by the US Air Force Predator drone alongside other senior ISIS commanders.
Kingpin jihadi recruiter Jones was inside a new ISIS headquarters with them when the American Hellfire missile struck it in June.
The building close to the Syria/Iraq border had been recently taken over by some of the warped terror movement’s chiefs.
Jones and her associates had just relocated from their capital of Raqqa to a safer location after coalition forces laid siege to it.
A Whitehall source said: "The Americans zapped her trying to get away from Raqqa. Quite frankly, it’s good riddance."
But sources said Jojo was not specifically targeted as he had not been deemed a combatant. If he was also killed in the missile strike, it would not have been on purpose.
Sources added the attack would have been aborted if it had been known he was close by.
Last year Jojo's father told the his son had been "a brilliant, normal boy" until his mother brainwashed him with ISIS propaganda.
A friend of his dad added: "Sally would send him texts that were disgusting. She would threaten to take JoJo to Islamic rallies and leave him there. It was awful."
But the US government could still face a backlash for killing Jojo if his death is confirmed.
It's understood Jones is the first woman to be specifically targeted in a drone strike.
Shiraz Maher, deputy director at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, told the : "If these reports are true, it means Sally Jones was targeted [by] a drone strike.
“That would be the first woman I know of who’s been specifically targeted in this way.”
The drone strike came as coalition forces tightened the squeeze on ISIS positions in Raqqa.
She met computer hacker Hussain, 21, from Birmingham, in Syria. Mum-of-two Jones, a former punk singer who lived on benefits, was put in charge of the female wing of an ISIS battalion of foreign fighters.
It was founded by Hussain to attack Europe and America. She was also a key recruiter of British ISIS wannabes. It is thought she is the sixth Briton killed in Syria by a drone.
THE KENT JIHADIST Who was Sally Jones? The former single mum from Kent who turned into 'Mrs Terror'?
Punk who joined ISIS
SALLY Jones left her Chatham council house for the killing fields of Syria to be a jihadi bride — taking eight-year-old Jojo with her but leaving behind an older son.
Once in Raqqa, the former punk singer wed Junaid Hussain, who she had met online, and took the name Umm Hussein al-Britani.
Back home her distraught family watched as she posted antiSemitic hate messages under a photograph of herself wearing a niqab and waving an AK-47.
In one propaganda post, she posed as a nun with a gun and spoke of her wish to behead Christians with a “nice blunt knife.”
Hussain was killed by a US army drone in Raqqa in 2015 — and Jones became known as the White Widow.
She also became a prolific recruiter for ISIS and her name was put on a US kill list.
But it did not stop her trying to encourage terror attacks in the West. In one 2016 post she sent a message saying: “Have a nice summer. I wouldn’t go into central London through June or July. Well, to be honest, I wouldn’t go there at all by Tube.”
Her last appearance on social media was in September 2016.
She said: “I’ll never marry again. I’ll remain loyal to my husband until my last breath.”
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