BELGIUM   –  “Congratulations,” said the voice at the other end of the line. “Your son died as a martyr.” Then nothing no explanation, no details, no body to bury.

The unknown man simply hung up the phone, leaving Saliha Ben Ali reeling, her world shattered. Her 18-year-old son, Sabri Refla, who told her he had left their Brussels home and gone to Syria to fight Bashar al-Assad and “help orphans,” was dead. For Ben Ali, her “life stopped there.” “It was horrible,” she remembers, tears in her eyes. “When I heard about his death I felt like I died myself.” She thought nothing could be worse than the loss of her beloved boy. Now, she says, she knows better and she feels as though her son has died for a second time. Sabri Refla had been recruited by a Brussels-based network which radicalized dozens of youths, alienated them from their parents, and financed their trips to Syria, court records show. Ben Ali says her son was smart and athletic, the happiest of her four children, but that he had a sensitive side..(CNN.COM)…[+]