Woman shot by U.K. police charged
Accused of terrorism, plotting murder
LONDON • A woman who was shot by officers during a raid by counterterrorism police in London was charged along with her mother Wednesday with preparing acts of terrorism and plotting murder.
The Metropolitan Police force said Rizlaine Boular, 21, and two other women — one of them Boular’s mother, Mina Dich, 43 — are accused of preparing terrorist acts and conspiracy to murder “a person or persons unknown.”
Boular, Dich and 20-yearold Khawla Barghouthi were detained April 27 during police raids in London and nearby Kent county. Boular was shot and injured, and formally arrested upon her release from a hospital three days later.
All three are due in court Thursday.
Seven other people who were arrested as part of the same operation, including women ages 18 and 19 and a 16-year-old boy, have been released without charges.
Police say they disrupted an active terror plot when they made the arrests.
British officials have set the threat level from international terrorism at “severe,” indicating an attack is highly likely.
In an unrelated case that also unfolded on April 27, a London man was arrested near Parliament carrying several knives.
Prosecutors said Wednesday that Khalid Mohamed Omar Ali was arrested with several knives near Parliament last month is also accused of being an al-Qaida bomb-maker in Afghanistan.
Ali appeared in court Wednesday to face one charge of preparing terrorist acts and two of making or having explosives.
The 27-year-old Londoner was arrested at gunpoint in the street near Parliament as part of what police called an ongoing counterterrorism operation.
They said he had been under surveillance.
Prosecutors say Ali’s fingerprints were allegedly found on parts for improvised explosive devices recovered by the U.S. in Afghanistan in 2012.
Ali refused to enter pleas during the hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
Not-guilty pleas were entered on his behalf and he was ordered detained until his next court appearance May 19.
Britain has seen a series of trials over terrorism plots since suicide bombers killed 52 London commuters on three subway trains and a bus in 2005.
On March 22 of this year, an attacker drove an SUV into pedestrians on London’s Westminster Bridge, killing four, before fatally stabbing a police officer inside Parliament’s gates. He was shot dead by police.
The latest alleged plot involving a mother and her daughter is unusual in that all those charged are women.