IS Files: From Coventry To Jihadist Fighters

Two years after the disappearance of three Coventry teenagers who went to fight for Islamic State, Sky News has found new information about their recruitment.

Rashed Amani and Ali Kalantar, who were both 19, and Mohammed Hadi, then 18, went to Syria in March 2014.

Sky News recently obtained the Islamic State recruitment files of thousands of jihadists who signed up to the terror group between 2012 and 2014.

Included in the files are the names of the three Coventry teenagers - in which they were are all asked what role they wanted in IS.

Given the options of fighter, suicide bomber, or what the files call 'infiltrator', they all say they want to be fighters - declarations which clash with the image friends and families painted of the boys before they left.

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Like the other boys, Rashed failed to fill out the question 'who recommended him', leaving many unanswered questions for those close to him.

Sharan Ali, a friend of Rashed, told us there had been nothing to indicate what the 19-year-old intended to do before he left for Syria.

I showed Sharan the file in which Rashed had said he wanted to be an IS fighter.

"This boy doesn't look like a fighter. He was a normal guy," he said.

"I loved Rashed like my brother. I loved him like a good friend. He's a nice, normal guy, nothing wrong with him."

Sharan said nothing about the business student's appearance had changed.

He wore normal clothes and spent time in a Coventry shisha bar and restaurant which he visited with his British girlfriend.

The family of Ali Kalantar told us their son had five university offers to study computer science.

Both Ali and Rashed's families say they were told of their deaths via Twitter.

The third teenager Mohammed Hadi is thought to still be fighting for IS.

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Two years on, many of the people we've spoken to say radicalisation has been driven underground.

It's become a taboo subject and is therefore much more difficult to prevent - even within the Muslim community - raising suspicions about who can be trusted.

In Hillfields, where we heard rumours of another youngster going off to join IS, one local resident Padasht Rashid told us: "I know one Kurdish family who took their kids out of the school.

"Now their mother is teaching them and I agree 100% with that.

"Things have changed. It seems like mosques have changed from a prayer place into a kind of scary group of criminals.

"I would say (they are) not radicals because killing people - no God will ask you for that."

Another young man who said he used to see Mohammed Hadi playing football said: "It's a very dangerous thing and there are a lot of Muslims in this country - a lot of youths - and we need to tackle this problem before these people get to their heads and actually radicalise them to travel to Syria."