'Congratulations, your son is now in paradise,' he says.
From German Teen To ISIS Jihadist: A Father's Struggle To Understand
Manfred Karg says he doesn't know how his eldest son, Alfons, became mixed up with radical Islamists.
Whatever happened, the German pensioner's 19-year-old son from Hamburg is now dead, one of at least 60 Germans killed fighting alongside ISIS militants, nine of them in suicide attacks, according to German authorities.
Karg says two young men with an "immigrant background" knocked on Alfons' mother's door to tell her of his death in Syria last summer.
"When she opened up, they said: 'Congratulations, your son is now in paradise,' " he says.
Karg adds they showed her a photograph of his bullet-ridden body and his goodbye letter, neither of which they let her keep for fear the police would use the items to track the young men down.
Estranged from the mother and his son, Karg says he didn't find out Alfons was dead until he saw a report on a TV news program in October.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/12/03/368049116/from-german-teen-to-isis-jihadist-a-fathers-struggle-to-understand