Gardai plan to question ‘Jihadi wife’
Government in plans to bring mum and child back from Syria
The child will not be safe with a mother that holds such radical views
DR UMAR AL-QADRI
ON MS SMITH’S RETURN
GARDAI will quiz “ISIS bride” Lisa Smith once she returns home, it is understood.
But the former Air Corps corporal will not be arrested immediately after she and her two-year-old daughter touch down on Irish soil, a source told the Irish Sunday Mirror.
Ms Smith, 37, travelled to Syria three years ago and has been stuck in the squalid Al-hawl refugee camp on the Syrian border with Iraq.
It is hoped she will return to Ireland on a voluntarily basis.
A senior security source said: “There has been extensive planning and liaising by the Government via the Departments of Foreign Affairs, Defence and Justice with international agencies.
“This is being devised and potentially implemented to bring Lisa Smith and her Irish daughter home to Ireland as a matter of urgency given rapidly deteriorating conditions in the camp where she has been sheltering.”
Defence and security sources told the Irish Sunday Mirror the plans may be yielding a positive result and could “involve a diplomatic rescue mission”.
The Special Detective Unit will want to know if Ms Smith, who worked on the Government jet, had jihadi contacts before she fled and how she became radicalised.
She will be questioned on how she travelled abroad and about any interaction with radical elements in Ireland.
However, the source said it’s unlikely Ms Smith would be arrested as it is unclear what charges could be brought against her.
Gardai will liaise with military intelligence and will jointly assess whether she poses a risk.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said a security assessment will be carried out on the mum.
It also emerged yesterday the Dundalk woman hadn’t been seen in the Al Hawl refugee camp for a number of days.
A source added this could indicate her and her daughter could be in transit.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said it could not provide ongoing comment on Ms Smith’s situation, while the Irish Defence Forces added the case was a matter for the DFA.
On Friday, Irish muslim leader Dr Umar Al-qadri claimed Ms Smith’s daughter should be taken away from the former Air Corps corporal upon their return to Ireland. The
chair of the Irish Muslim Peace and Integration Council said: “I believe the child will not be safe with a mother that holds such radical, extremist views and is OK with the type of horrors that were committed by the Islamic State.”
Last week, Ms Smith claimed she just “ran with the crowd” to join the
Islamic death cult. In an interview with a Sunday newspaper, she said she now wants to return home.
She also revealed her husband was a British jihadist whose first wife, from Co Tyrone, was jailed for plotting to raise her children in Syria under ISIS.
Ms Smith said her husband, whom she named as British citizen Sajid Aslam, had been involved in fighting and was probably killed in the past three months.
His former wife Lorna Moore was jailed for two-and-a-half years for not telling authorities her husband’s plans to join ISIS and planning to take her three young children to Syria.
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