MY HUSBAND THE JIHADI
Isis bride reveals she married British Jihadist whose Northern Irish ex-wife was jailed for trying to raise children in Isis war zone
ISIS Bride Lisa Smith has revealed that her husband was a British Jihadist whose Northern Irish first wife was jailed for plotting to raise her children in Syria under Isis.
Ms Smith was circumspect when asked directly if her husband, whom she named Sajid Aslam, had been involved in fighting, admitting only that he had taken a snipers’ course and that he had spent periods of time away from her with ‘brothers’ – a term used by Muslims for fellow male Muslims.
She told this newspaper that she believes Aslam, the father of her daughter, is dead – having been killed in the past three months.
He had stayed behind in an area where there was active conflict while she travelled on by herself.
British citizen Aslam worked as a school teacher in the UK before travelling to Syria to fight for Isis in 2014.
His Northern Irish wife, Lorna Moore, was jailed for two-and-a-half years for not telling authorities about her husband’s plans to join Isis and for planning to take her three young children, including an 11-month old baby, to Syria to live under Isis.
During sentencing at London’s Old Bailey, Judge Charles Wide described Moore, who is originally from Omagh, Co. Tyrone, as a ‘very strong character’ who ‘knew perfectly well of your husband’s dedication to terrorism’.
‘One of the troubling things about you is your facility for telling lies,’ he added.
He said Moore had told ‘lie after lie’ to the jury during her trial and that some of her evidence was ‘nonsense’.
Louth woman Lisa Smith told how she divorced her own first husband after he refused to join her in Syria.
‘I was still married to my husband and I said to him: “Please come. You know, I’ll wait here in this madafa [guest house for females] for one year and then if you don’t come I need to have a divorce.”
‘And I says: “We’ll have to divorce because I can’t stay married to you there and me here.”
‘At that stage he was still begging me come out. He said: “It’s not a good place, I’m telling you please.”
‘And I was just like: “No, no,” because I don’t believe him, you know.
‘I don’t believe the rumours about the Islamic State, that they do so much... stuff. So much violent stuff.
‘I don’t believe anything. I don’t know what to believe. I think from the day I came into this place till the day I leave I think I’ll be so confused as to whatever happened.
‘Why I came, why I was here and what’s going on. I’m just so confused.
‘I think most people are confused, you know, but after this I don’t get married. I stay in madaffa for five months and I go and stay with a Syrian family for three months.’
Under Sharia law, as a single woman Smith was not allowed to live alone, so she started to ask friends to help her find a new husband among Isis recruits.
‘So then the people – I have people, friends and stuff who know I want – they say: “Okay, she wants to get married,” so who are they going to get her married to because nobody trusts nobody there and it’s very hard to get married – especially with someone as the same mentality as you.
‘But then her [her daughter’s] father, he came and, you know, proposed. said no about four or five times but then I agreed because I didn’t know what else to do at the time.’
Laughing, she tells the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘He’s very famous actually, on the papers… Sajid Aslam, he’s married to another Irish woman up the north.
‘She’s done three-and-a-half years in prison because they said she was trying to come here when she wasn’t trying to come.
‘I don’t think she was trying to come anyway. He never said anything about her trying to come here and her kids, I think, were taken off her.
‘He’s from Walsall, Birmingham, he’s dead now anyway, I think.
‘So I didn’t know he was in the papers or anything like that when I got married to him. I think after two or three days I wanted to get a divorce and he wouldn’t give me a divorce, and he said to me: “Every day you say to me you want a divorce” because I wanted a divorce forever.’
Asked why she wanted a divorce, she explained: ‘I just, I didn’t. I wasn’t attracted to him and things
‘I don’t believe rumours Isis do so much stuff’
‘After two or three days I wanted to get a divorce’
between us were very… we were very different personalities, so I just say to him: “If I go my way and you go your way, you know, I don’t think we’re suited as a married couple.”
‘I think more that he didn’t want to be on his own. He missed his family back home too much and, you know, being from Britain and that, he can’t go home anyway.
‘I think the reason he stayed married to me was that he didn’t want to be on his own.’
Asked if he was trained to fight, she explained that he went on a snipers’ course when he wasn’t allowed to work as a teacher.
‘So then he didn’t work. Then he went away. He was away with some brothers for like two months. He did, I think it was a snipers’ course, for two months but he never became a sniper. He just did the course and came back.
‘At that time the attack on Raqqa was coming but I was pregnant, so I said: “No, I’m not staying here,” so I left a note on the table for my husband to say: “I’m gone.”
‘He didn’t know where I was gone – he didn’t have a number. I was gone to [Redacted] with some Syrians because I said: “I can’t stay here because I’m too scared, especially by myself in the apartment.”
‘So I left and it took him like a month, two months, to track me down after this,’ she said.
She smiles when asked what reception she got from him when he caught up with her.
‘He was just very happy to see me and that I was okay. He didn’t fight with me, he didn’t do anything, he was just so happy that I was alive and I was okay but it was alright, like, that was the main thing.
‘I mean he could have really did a lot to me, beat me, but he was okay.’
It was then that she gave birth to their daughter.
‘He didn’t work after this. He did this course but he never went back because he said: “There’s no weapons, there’s no nothing and you just sit there and you do nothing.”
‘He said: “So why am I wasting my time going back there, there’s no point.”
‘So he never worked, from [redacted] till the day he died, he didn’t work.’
Asked if she was happy with this, she said: ‘No, I wasn’t because he was just at home every day and it just caused problems and fights. And I don’t like this – just go to work and come home and just do what you’re doing and just leave me in the house to cook and clean and, you know, women, they need their space.’
‘It took him a month or two to track me down’