After 12 years in Malaysia studying religious education under the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, Khairul came back to Indonesia with the intention to be involved in terrorist activities and help influence the younger generation.

He was eventually arrested and convicted for his involvement in a  bank robbery in 2010, an attack on Hamparan Perak sub-precinct police station that killed three policemen, and also for conducting extremist military training in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.

While he was in prison, he realized his son was no longer going to school because he was being bullied; other children would say things like, “Your father is a terrorist. He commits treason.”   

“That really affected me," says Khairul. "I came to think that being stigmatized is dangerous for the younger generation. Children who do not pursue education and feel like they are outsiders are vulnerable to becoming terrorists themselves. If the children are not tracked and monitored after their parents are arrested, does not it mean a child’s education is at risk of being abandoned? The children are victims in this. They pay the price for their parents' choices.”  

“When I became a terrorist, that decision was full of action,” says Khairul. “Now I am repentant and back on the right path, but I must be able to prove it also with action. Rehabilitating these children is my way of doing that.”