Most parents just want the best for their children, but that’s not always how things turn out.

Take for example Valeria Khalija Collina, the mother of London Bridge terrorist Youssef Zaghba.

The 68-year-old lives in Bologna, Italy, and that’s where the Daily Beast headed to go hear her side of the story.

Below are some excerpts from that interview:

“There are no words,” she told The Daily Beast and a handful of journalists gathered in her living room. “He met the wrong people. I don’t know what they did to him.”

Collina said she knew her son was being radicalized [sic], but she didn’t know exactly what to do about it, though she stops short of taking the blame. “Parents always ask what they could have done in situations like this,” she said. “It’s a natural response.”

She was born in Italy, but moved to Morroco and converted to Islam after meeting her husband almost 30 years ago. Two years ago she left her husband, who took a second wife, and returned with her son to Bologna:

He traveled on his Italian passport to the United Kingdom, where he met friends his mother didn’t like and worked part time at a fast food chicken restaurant before returning to Italy. He was stopped at Stansted Airport once when he was trying to fly back to Italy to visit his mother, but he was released without incident.

“He traveled around Italy in February and March of 2016,” she explained. During that time, she said, he showed her an ISIS video in which the terror organization was depicted “handing out food and rebuilding roads and bridges.” She said her son [pictured in his younger days in Morroco] wanted to live in a “pure Islamic state” and that Syria was where he thought he could find a job and raise a family. In March 2016, he tried to do just that but got caught…

Italian police took his passport after they found propaganda material on his cellphone and started an investigation, but returned the passport a few months later when his lawyer won him a reprieve. In Italy, it is not illegal to have terrorist materials on personal cellphones.

He was placed on a European watch list, and later returned to the UK and worked at the same fast food chicken restaurant. His mother visited him in the UK and wasn’t impressed:

“I didn’t like his neighborhood or his friends,” she said. “I didn’t feel good about it at all.”

…On June 1, Youssef called his mother for the last time. She sensed what she calls “melancholy” in his voice and, in retrospect, said he was making his farewell call. He talked to her about the garden in the house where he lived, which she now believes was his reference to “paradise” or heaven as described in the Quran.

A few days after she last spoke with him, he disappeared off the radar. When the London attacks occurred, she did not think for a minute he might be involved, but she wondered if perhaps he had gone undercover “to avoid getting into trouble.” But when she couldn’t reach him, she alerted the Italian authorities that he was missing. On Monday, when a police car pulled up to her apartment, she was sure they were coming to give her good news or tell her that perhaps he was in trouble again. Instead, they told her he was dead, killed by police for carrying out the June 4 terrorist attacks.

“I didn’t want to believe it,” she said. “How did it come to this?”

How indeed.

You can read the full interview HERE.

[source:dailybeast]