Sunday, 29 Sep 2024

Britain’s youngest female ISIS terrorist has sentence SLASHED on appeal

“I was not allowed to go out with my friends from school – so to have these friends was exciting”

Safaa Boular

Lord Justice Holroyde, sitting with two other judges, said the original sentence did not consider that Boular was indoctrinated from the age of 12.

He said: “We are of the view, with respect to the learned (sentencing) judge, that he did not give sufficient weight to the particularly potent effect of the two factors of youth and grooming, or indoctrination, taken in combination.

“Whilst we have hesitated to differ from the judge below, we do conclude that insufficient weight was given to the fact that the appellant set herself on a course to this grave offending when she was only 15 years old and had, from the age of 12, been subjected to radicalisation by the malign influence of her mother and her mother’s friends.”

The original trial heard that despite Safaa having type 1 diabetes, her mum Mina Dich, 45, would force her to fast despite it not being a religious requirement.

Mina would also assault and spit at her daughters, jurors were told, and married Rizlaine off to a man she had only known for five days.

Safaa ran away from home on 29 August 2014, writing, “This home is not the right place for me”, in a note she left.

But she was later found in a nearby park after trying to contact ChildLine and returned home, BBC reported.

The daughters eventually conformed to their mum’s conservative worldview and Safaa met with extremists online.

Recaling the experience, she told jurors at her original trial: “It was special, it was exciting.

“I was not allowed to go out with my friends from school – so to have these friends was exciting.”

Her terror plot to kill innocent people in London was foiled after MI5 bugged the family home in Vauxhall.

They discovered she was in contact with 32-year-old Naweed Hussain, originally from Coventry, who was a member of ISIS in Syria.

Describing their relationship in her original trial, Boular said: “He was very caring, very sweet, very flattering. It was the first time that I had received this kind of attention from a male.”

She purported to marry the terrorist — who was later killed in a drone strike — in an “online ceremony” and planned to join him in Syria and become a suicide bomber.

But her plot was thwarted after her passport was seized, and so she diverted her attention to her home city of London.

Bowler’s older sister Rizlaine, 23, admitted to preparing acts of terrorism and was jailed for life with a minimum term of 16 years.

The Court of Appeal rejected her bid to challenge the sentence.

Rizlaine’s mum, Mina, was jailed for six years and nine months, with an additional five years on licence, for her part in the terror plot.

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