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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.

Alfons' mother could not be reached for comment.

Hans-Georg Maassen, who heads the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, told the Bild Sunday newspaper late last month that at least 550 radical German Islamists have gone to help ISIS. Most of them have an immigrant background. But a few, like Alfons, are converts.

Karg doesn't understand why German authorities don't stop young Germans who join Islamist groups before they leave the country. He says German mosques that suspected extremists frequent are under surveillance by police and that a 6-foot-5 teen with blond hair like Alfons going in and out should have raised suspicions.

Whether his son went to such mosques is unknown, and Hamburg intelligence authorities declined to speak to NPR.

“ That was for me a crucial alarm bell. A young person, 18 years of age, buys himself a flat-screen TV and then we are suddenly allowed to throw away everything he has?

- Manfred Karg, whose son Alfons was killed fighting in Syria

Karg says there were other signs his son was in trouble.

He says Alfons grew more withdrawn after he secretly converted to Islam at age 17. The father says the lanky, insecure teen didn't grow a beard but cropped his blond hair short, stopped shaking hands with girls and women, and abandoned his apprenticeship.

Karg says he found out about the conversion from his younger son, Leonard, who has a different mother. The boy caught his half-brother praying during a weekend visit.

Leonard told Karg that Alfons' reaction was: "Don't tell Papa," just as he always hid things from his father.

Alfons was born on April 26, 1995. Karg says he missed a lot of his son's childhood because of his highly antagonistic relationship with the boy's mother, whom he never married. With the help of German youth services, he says, he eventually secured visitation rights when Alfons was in elementary school.

As his son grew older, the two spent more time together, including overnight visits. Karg believes the polite but distant boy had a difficult relationship with his mother, but Alfons deflected any questions about his life with her.

Karg says Alfons had a closer relationship with his half-sister (born to his mother) and half-brother (born to Karg's girlfriend). But Karg says he had a hard time expressing affection, even to them.

i i

Manfred Karg, a retired German merchant marine, says he is frustrated that authorities don't stop young Germans like his son who join Islamist groups before they leave the country. He says German mosques that suspected extremists frequent are under surveillance by police and that a 6-foot-5 teen with blond hair like Alfons going in and out should have raised suspicions. Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson/NPR

Manfred Karg, a retired German merchant marine, says he is frustrated that authorities don't stop young Germans like his son who join Islamist groups before they leave the country. He says German mosques that suspected extremists frequent are under surveillance by police and that a 6-foot-5 teen with blond hair like Alfons going in and out should have raised suspicions.

Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson/NPR

When he learned his son wanted to apprentice as a social work assistant, Karg was very happy, he says. Alfons' professional mentor told Karg the boy was doing well. But Alfons stopped speaking to Karg following an argument.

Several weeks before graduation, he quit his apprenticeship, his father says. After that, when Alfons turned 18, he emptied his savings account and took a trip with two Turkish friends to Turkey.

Karg says Alfons came back Germany for a while and worked as a night guard.

But before last Christmas, unbeknownst to his father, Alfon left for Turkey again. Karg says he heard through acquaintances that his eldest had called his mother and told her to give away his belongings.

"That was for me a crucial alarm bell," Karg says. "A young person, 18 years of age, buys himself a flat-screen TV and then we are suddenly allowed to throw away everything he has?"

He called the domestic intelligence agency branch in Hamburg about his son, but it was too late: He never returned to Germany.

Preventing young Germans from heading to Syria or Iraq — whether they are the fewer than 10 percent who are converts like Alfons, or the rest who come from an immigrant background — is something German authorities say is a top priority.

In nearby North Rhine Westphalia, the head of the state's domestic intelligence, Burkhard Freier, says his government has launched three pilot programs called "Signpost" to reach out to at-risk youth.

"We want to know if they bear fruit, and I can say after five months, they are," Freier says. "We get at least 10 inquiries a week at each of the three projects and at our agency. These inquiries are worth a lot because individuals youths can be reached who we help to get out" of jihadist groups.

He acknowledges the numbers aren't large but argues that it takes time to build trust, not only with at-risk youth but with leaders and parents of the communities where they live.

Most of those communities are immigrant and Muslim, and often feel mistreated by their host country.

But in Hamburg, Karg argues grass-roots efforts and pilot projects are taking too long. He favors more aggressive intervention by German authorities and immediate notification of parents if the suspects are minors.

Karg adds he isn't taking a chance with his surviving son, 13-year-old Leonard. He says he has told Leonard's school what happened to his half-brother and to be on the lookout for any suspicious behavior among students.

"The possibilities of someone influencing him are there," Karg says.

jihadist

Islamic State

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

Islamist fighters

Muslim radicalization

Germany

Matthew and Grace Huang, an American couple who had been forced to remain in Qatar over the death of their adopted 8-year old daughter in 2013, have left the country en route to the United States.

On Sunday, an appeals court cleared the Huangs of all charges in their daughter's death, but as they arrived at the Hamad International Airport in Doha later that day to fly home to California, the couple were detained again. Qatari authorities said another appeal had been filed in their case and that they could not travel.

That travel ban was lifted Wednesday.

In a statement, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry applauded the couple's release:

"The Attorney General of the State of Qatar has informed the U.S. Embassy in Qatar that no further appeal will be filed in the case of Matthew and Grace Huang. At the opening of business on Wednesday December 3, the travel ban will be lifted and Mr. and Mrs. Huang will be free to travel."

The Huangs had been living in the Qatari capital of Doha since 2012, when Matthew Huang took an engineering job there. In January 2013, their daughter, Gloria, died after refusing to eat for days. The Huangs were charged with murder. During their trial, one Qatari prosecutor suggested the couple starved their daughter to traffick her or sell her organs. The Huangs spent several months in a Qatari prison and were sentenced to three years in prison in March. They weren't detained during their appeal, but they were not allowed to leave the country. Meanwhile, their two other adopted children were sent to live with relatives in the U.S.

According to the California Innocence Project, which assisted the Huangs in fighting their detention, Gloria had trouble absorbing nutrients from food, was malnourished and had had giardia, a parasitic condition, since the Huangs adopted her from Ghana at the age of 4.

The California Innocence Project also says of Gloria:

"From time to time she would exhibit an eating disorder — common among children with backgrounds similar to hers — where she would refuse food for days at a time and then eat more than an adult. Other times she would eat food from the garbage even when she had healthy food available."

As the couple fought for their release, Matthew Huang told Yahoo News that suspicions were racially motivated. "I believe that authorities in Qatar suspected foul play because we are Asian and we adopted three children from Africa who are black," he told Yahoo's Katie Couric. "This country does not understand adoptions."

Pic of Matt and Grace on plane. We can all feel God’s Presence here right now. http://t.co/GkalJ60XtO

— Eric Volz (@EricVolz) December 3, 2014

The Associated Press reports the U.S. ambassador to Qatar, Dana Shell Smith, had accompanied the Huangs on Wednesday "to ensure they cleared passport control and reached their departure gate." Smith told the news service, "We feel relieved. We feel gratitude to the legal system in the state of Qatar, which after some time worked as a good legal system should."

A representative for the family, Eric Volz, tweeted earlier today, "Thank you to all the silent heroes on this one. Wheels are up."

Qatar

At first it seemed she was right. ELWA3 opened originally with 120 beds, then quickly expanded to 250. In September it seemed that even that wasn't enough. Staff members had to turn away suspected Ebola patients at the gate.

So to hear that the hospital's patient roster had dropped to just eight last week is great news.

A spokeswoman for Doctors Without Borders says the admissions fluctuate a lot, and the tally has since gone up from eight to 17. But still 17 Ebola patients is a far cry from 250.

Part of why that statistic of eight screams so loudly is that ELWA3 is now a sign of how dramatically the number of cases has come down in Liberia.

There's no denying that it was worth building the 250-bed hospital. It got all of those people out of circulation, so they couldn't spread the virus to others.

But now the international response once again seems out of step with epidemic. On the same day that ELWA3 had more than 200 empty beds last week, the Chinese government opened a brand new 100 bed Ebola treatment unit just down the street.

ebola

Liberia

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.

Alfons' mother could not be reached for comment.

Hans-Georg Maassen, who heads the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, told the Bild Sunday newspaper late last month that at least 550 radical German Islamists have gone to help ISIS. Most of them have an immigrant background. But a few, like Alfons, are converts.

Karg doesn't understand why German authorities don't stop young Germans who join Islamist groups before they leave the country. He says German mosques that suspected extremists frequent are under surveillance by police and that a 6-foot-5 teen with blond hair like Alfons going in and out should have raised suspicions.

Whether his son went to such mosques is unknown, and Hamburg intelligence authorities declined to speak to NPR.

“ That was for me a crucial alarm bell. A young person, 18 years of age, buys himself a flat-screen TV and then we are suddenly allowed to throw away everything he has?

- Manfred Karg, whose son Alfons was killed fighting in Syria

Karg says there were other signs his son was in trouble.

He says Alfons grew more withdrawn after he secretly converted to Islam at age 17. The father says the lanky, insecure teen didn't grow a beard but cropped his blond hair short, stopped shaking hands with girls and women, and abandoned his apprenticeship.

Karg says he found out about the conversion from his younger son, Leonard, who has a different mother. The boy caught his half-brother praying during a weekend visit.

Leonard told Karg that Alfons' reaction was: "Don't tell Papa," just as he always hid things from his father.

Alfons was born on April 26, 1995. Karg says he missed a lot of his son's childhood because of his highly antagonistic relationship with the boy's mother, whom he never married. With the help of German youth services, he says, he eventually secured visitation rights when Alfons was in elementary school.

As his son grew older, the two spent more time together, including overnight visits. Karg believes the polite but distant boy had a difficult relationship with his mother, but Alfons deflected any questions about his life with her.

Karg says Alfons had a closer relationship with his half-sister (born to his mother) and half-brother (born to Karg's girlfriend). But Karg says he had a hard time expressing affection, even to them.

i i

Manfred Karg, a retired German merchant marine, says he is frustrated that authorities don't stop young Germans like his son who join Islamist groups before they leave the country. He says German mosques that suspected extremists frequent are under surveillance by police and that a 6-foot-5 teen with blond hair like Alfons going in and out should have raised suspicions. Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson/NPR

Manfred Karg, a retired German merchant marine, says he is frustrated that authorities don't stop young Germans like his son who join Islamist groups before they leave the country. He says German mosques that suspected extremists frequent are under surveillance by police and that a 6-foot-5 teen with blond hair like Alfons going in and out should have raised suspicions.

Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson/NPR

When he learned his son wanted to apprentice as a social work assistant, Karg was very happy, he says. Alfons' professional mentor told Karg the boy was doing well. But Alfons stopped speaking to Karg following an argument.

Several weeks before graduation, he quit his apprenticeship, his father says. After that, when Alfons turned 18, he emptied his savings account and took a trip with two Turkish friends to Turkey.

Karg says Alfons came back Germany for a while and worked as a night guard.

But before last Christmas, unbeknownst to his father, Alfon left for Turkey again. Karg says he heard through acquaintances that his eldest had called his mother and told her to give away his belongings.

"That was for me a crucial alarm bell," Karg says. "A young person, 18 years of age, buys himself a flat-screen TV and then we are suddenly allowed to throw away everything he has?"

He called the domestic intelligence agency branch in Hamburg about his son, but it was too late: He never returned to Germany.

Preventing young Germans from heading to Syria or Iraq — whether they are the fewer than 10 percent who are converts like Alfons, or the rest who come from an immigrant background — is something German authorities say is a top priority.

In nearby North Rhine Westphalia, the head of the state's domestic intelligence, Burkhard Freier, says his government has launched three pilot programs called "Signpost" to reach out to at-risk youth.

"We want to know if they bear fruit, and I can say after five months, they are," Freier says. "We get at least 10 inquiries a week at each of the three projects and at our agency. These inquiries are worth a lot because individuals youths can be reached who we help to get out" of jihadist groups.

He acknowledges the numbers aren't large but argues that it takes time to build trust, not only with at-risk youth but with leaders and parents of the communities where they live.

Most of those communities are immigrant and Muslim, and often feel mistreated by their host country.

But in Hamburg, Karg argues grass-roots efforts and pilot projects are taking too long. He favors more aggressive intervention by German authorities and immediate notification of parents if the suspects are minors.

Karg adds he isn't taking a chance with his surviving son, 13-year-old Leonard. He says he has told Leonard's school what happened to his half-brother and to be on the lookout for any suspicious behavior among students.

"The possibilities of someone influencing him are there," Karg says.

jihadist

Islamic State

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

Islamist fighters

Muslim radicalization

Germany