Cardiff: "Do you know how much it hurts to raise someone and watch them grow and suddenly they're just gone?" says Ahmed Muthana, 57, a retired electronics engineer in Wales whose two sons Nasser, 20, and Aseel, 17, have gone to fight for Islamic State.
Like any father of faraway children, he can easily slip into a reverie, talking about the studious older son who was accepted into medical school and his more rambunctious and athletic younger brother.
"The little one (Aseel) wanted to be an Olympic swimmer and an English teacher. Nasser liked science and wanted to be a doctor," said their father. "Nasser was always primarily concerned with his studies and Aseel liked to play around."
Then, without notice, the young men vanished.
"Nasser told us he was going to Birmingham, and the next thing we know, he is in Syria," he says. "Aseel said he had a test and suddenly he's in Cyprus."
The Muthana family were thrust into the spotlight this week when Ahmed Muthana told journalists he believed Nasser was one of the Islamic State fighters in a video showing beheadings.
Camera crews camped outside the small white semi-detached house near the center of the Welsh capital Cardiff. The father now says he was initially mistaken: although his sons are fighting with Islamic State, they were not among the men shown in the video beheading Syrian soldiers.
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