Yesterday was quite a day for The Sunday Times security correspondent Richard Kerbaj.

It started with him getting the splash story on the 10,000th Sunday Times and ended with a Bafta.

The splash was with political editor Tim Shipman on former MI5 and MI6 chiefs warning that quitting the EU would present a security risk from terrorists.

A memorable day ended with Richard bagging the British Academy Television Awards’ best single documentary for his My Son the Jihadi at London’s Royal Festival Hall.

Richard produced the moving account of Sally Evans in My Son the Jihadi. It was televised on Channel 4 last October.

He told news.co.uk:

I would like to pay homage to The Sunday Times. It couldn’t have happened without the projection that the paper gave the story.

I have had a lot of support from The Sunday Times. It means the world to me. It’s the greatest newsroom I have ever worked in.

Print journalism can complement film-making. I hope my success encourages other journalists to do things like this.

Sally Evans as the terrorist’s mother gave everything of herself. It’s recognition for her. I believed there was something there when I first set out on the story. There has been such teamwork in making the documentary – it’s one big family. I dedicate the award to my father, who has stage 4 cancer.”

Richard revealed that he has begun work on a second observational documentary.

In June last year, 25-year-old Thomas Evans from High Wycombe – who went by the name Abdul Hakim after converting to Islam – was killed in Kenya fighting for terror group al-Shabaab.

It was behind multiple atrocities in Kenya, including the 2013 Westgate shopping mall attack in Nairobi which killed 67 people.

Former teaching assistant Sally faced the shock of seeing a picture on Twitter of Thomas’s body. He had been killed by Kenyan soldiers while attacking a military base.

Sally said she will always miss Thomas, the young boy she remembered. But she is glad the person he became – Abdul Hakim – is dead.

It was in May 2014 when Richard began to work on the story with the minimum of detail. He wanted to write about a family who had someone that had been subject to radicalisation.

A contact gave him a name and the area where she lived. Exhaustive electoral roll searches and several phone calls later, Richard finally found Sally.

They subsequently met up and Richard, 37, wrote The Sunday Times story on her plight that appeared on June 1, 2014.

Richard, who has been with The Sunday Times since January 2010, said:

I went over to High Wycombe on my days off, set up a small digital camera to start filming her story.

“She has a secular background, but is very eloquent on the subject of radicalisation. I wanted to put her in control. She had no agenda, she just wanted her son to walk through the door. Mothers of jihadists have never spoken out until now.”

Richard, who lives in Wapping, saw the documentary potential and linked up with production company True Vision to go through his raw footage.

Bafta-winning director Peter Beard then got involved in the project, which took a profound turn on June 14 last year as news filtered through on social media that Thomas had been killed.

Richard said:

Sally called me up crying after hearing about a picture of Thomas circulating on Twitter and then her younger son Micheal sent me a two-word text saying ‘It’s him.’ By then, Peter Beard and I were already in the car to High Wycombe.”

The documentary also charts the aftermath of Thomas’s death, culminating in Sally gaining the strength to speak publicly at a counter-terrorist organisation’s dinner about her plight.

Aussie Richard, who worked for News Corp title The Australian before getting an award-wining secondment to The Times in London in 2008, is full of admiration for Sally. He concluded: “The story is so overwhelmingly powerful. The wider problem is the people left behind.”