The parents of a suspected Islamic State member from the UK branded “Jihadi Jack” have been spared jail after being found guilty of funding terrorism.

Sally Lane, 57, and John Letts, 58 – who were found not guilty of a second count of the same charge, and the jury was undecided on a third – have been sentenced to 15 months in prison suspended for 12 months.

They stood trial accused of sending or trying to send £1,723 to their son Jack Letts, who left his family home in Oxford in 2014 aged 18 to travel to Syria, where he is currently in prison.

There were gasps in the public gallery as the verdicts were read out but the defendants showed no reaction in the dock.

The couple told the Old Bailey that the money was to help get their son, a Muslim convert, out of danger in the war-torn country.

But prosecutors said the couple had “turned a blind eye” to warnings by police and charity workers that the money could inadvertently fund terrorism, a crime under the Terrorism Act.

Jurors had to decide whether a person would reasonably have suspected the money would go to terrorism and whether the couple acted “under duress” believing their son was in immediate danger at the time.

Letts, who suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder, told his parents in 2014 that he was going to Jordan to study Arabic.

Speaking exclusively to Sky News, Letts’ best friend from school, Mazen Mustafa, said he was a popular teenager.

“Jack was funny, he was a very nice guy,” Mr Mustafa said.

“He was always very thoughtful of others and he gave everyone a chance and he was just generally a nice guy, all you could ask for from a best friend.”

After a few months away, Letts revealed to his parents in a phone call that he was not in Jordan but in Syria, enmeshed with IS, the trial heard.

Police became involved after a series of posts on Letts’ social media accounts.

One was a photograph of Letts, giving what appeared to be the IS one-fingered salute, on a hilltop in Raqqa, the terror group’s former stronghold in Syria.

Another was a Facebook comment below a photograph of a former classmate in British Army uniform, which read: “I would love to perform a martyrdom operation in this scene.”

Following reports about his alleged involvement with IS, Letts earned the moniker “Jihadi Jack” in the British tabloid media.

Mr Mustafa told Sky News: “To be honest, when the Jihadi Jack came about I thought it was quite funny because I thought ‘where did that come from?’

“I think Jack was impressionable, he was very young, and I think he was very easily targeted by someone.”

The Old Bailey was shown months of messages between Letts and his parents, with the couple trying to persuade their son to come home.

Over the course of 2015, the pair attempted several wire-transfers to intermediaries in Lebanon and Turkey, the trial heard.

They said the money was to pay a people smuggler to get Letts into Turkey.

Prosecutors said the couple were “naive” to ignore the likelihood that the money could end with a terrorist organisation.

But defence lawyers argued it was “inhumane” for the couple to be tried for helping their son.

John Letts, an organic wheat farmer, and his wife Sally Lane – a former Oxfam fundraiser – were arrested in 2016 and denied three counts of funding terrorism.

Prosecutor Alison Morgan QC said the Crown would not seek a retrial on the undecided third charge and asked for it to lie on file.

The Old Bailey trial comes to a conclusion after years of high court appeals against the charges.

Meanwhile, Jack Letts is currently in prison in northern Syria, where he has been detained by Kurdish forces because of his alleged IS links.

He has dual UK-Canadian nationality through his Canadian father but neither the Canadian nor British governments have confirmed if Letts would be allowed home.

The Home Office told Sky News that it does not comment on individual cases but that people who travelled to Syria could pose a national security risk.

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