Melbourne school dropout turned to ISIL after mum's death

A Melbourne school dropout recruited by Islamic State converted to Islam after his mother died of cancer, it has emerged.

Jake Bilardi, once a gifted student at Craigieburn Secondary College, began searching for answers after losing his mother in 2012, his aunty, Connie Bilardi, told News Corp.

Months after the death, Jake, the youngest of six children, told classmates he had found his new religion but kept his reasons for converting private.

Sheik Mustafa Sarakibi from the Hume Islamic Youth Centre in Coolaroo said the teen had been at the mosque for about six months to a year and prayed there once or twice a week.

The 18-year-old flew to the Middle East late last year and in December appeared in a Twitter photo holding an assault rifle and sitting between two extremists in front of an ISIL flag.

British news media mistakenly reported that he was a UK citizen who had left for Syria after not being ­accepted into university.

Australian authorities believe the young man was impressionable and radicalised fairly quickly after making contact with an ISIL recruiter at some point, possibly while surfing extremist material on the internet, and without coming to the notice of police or security agencies, Fairfax Media reports.

Jake made plans to become a suicide bomber in Iraq, though he pulled out, and was last known to still be in the country.