As a teenager, Jejoen Bontinck danced in music videos and hung out with friends in the Netherlands.
Within a year he had transformed into a young Muslim convert, preaching in the streets.
"He started to become very religious - always praying. He stopped wearing Western clothes…so we really see the signs of radicalization,” his father Dimitri Bontinck told CNN.
Jejoen said he was leaving to study in Cairo, but when he missed his sister’s birthday his father suspected his son was actually in Syria.
He began to search the internet for any sign of his son.
"It was Syria this, Syria that. One day I find a video ... of friends of his from Antwerp. So when I saw that, I knew right away- my son is there," he said.
Despite legal advice to the contrary, Dimitri decided to go after Jejoen himself, keeping a video diary along the way.
With the help of free lawyers in Aleppo he eventually was lead to Syria’s extremists. It took nearly a year and two trips before he tracked down his son who was with the Islamist group Jabhat al Nusra.
“We were crying. I never cried before when he was missing, when I didn't know anything,” Dimitri told CNN.
“But the first physical contact: I held him like a small baby. It's like children whose lost they path - you know - the way.”
The fighters let Jejoen go, but he is now being monitored by Belgian police and is barred from speaking to the press.
He is facing charges of recruiting jihadists to fight in Syria and is due in court at the end of June.
Jejoen’s father insists his son is innocent.
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