“For the past few months, he was very quiet and he wanted isolation because he was watching or doing something on social media. And that’s why he was brainwashed,” Zarine Khan said in an exclusive interview with CNN’s “AC360” Thursday.
Now Mohammed Hamzah Khan, 19, is accused of trying to support ISIS. This week he pleaded not guilty to a federal charge of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.
Outside the courtroom in Chicago, his mother told reporters she had a message for the terror group’s leader: “Leave our children alone.”
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“Maybe the mistake we made was maybe we protected our children. We were trying to protect our culture or values. Maybe that was a mistake,” Zarine Khan said. “I would tell them to expose their children more to what’s going on in the world, help them develop critical thinking skills to differentiate between the good and the bad guys.”
CNN’s Michael Martinez and George Howell contributed to this report.
