Nonsense.

These were scally kids, second generation UK citizens, who appear to have spent their days in Britain getting up to what their white kid colleagues have taught them, usually to the deep shame and consternation of more devout parents.

Went off to a stag night and see their mate get married, go on a road trip (much, I would imagine, as a non-practicing Christian might visit the Vatican the first time they visited Rome - out of fascination as much as anything else), and were caught up in the fighting.

If they have been radicalised (and actually they didn't say that - one of them said he prayed more and tried to be a better Muslim - they didn't come across at all as vengeful) it was easy to see why. And the tales of unjustly imprisoned famous Christians facing an unknown and potentially short future should show that this is quite a natural response to the sort of things that appeared to be put on them.

It seems to me that they were not the sharpest tools in the tool box, in fact were somewhat endearingly ordinary scally kids who had learned something trying to make sense of their treatment.

It would have been a no-brainer to realise that someone with such a police record as was read out at one point was not what anyone could call a particularly devout Muslim, let alone one with much of an interest in things beyond their own lives.

The other chap, last year, Moazzam Begg, was clearly an intelligent, thoughtful and quite pious person. We have countless generations of Christian missionaries who would have done what he decided to do by going on humanitarian relief work for his fellow Muslims in Bosnia, and many who have got radicalised to such causes as a result of what they have seen in that kind of work.