White Widow ‘zapped’ from 7,000 miles
BRITISH jihadi SallyAnne Jones was killed in a drone strike in Syria by a pilot based 7,000 miles away in the US, it emerged yesterday.
The US Air Force pilot remotely “zapped” Jones – dubbed the White Widow – from a base in the Nevada desert, said military sources.
It is believed she died along with her 12-yearold son Jojo close to the border between Syria and Iraq, but news of the strike in June was not made public.
London-born Jones, 50, who went to Syria in 2013 to join IS with her husband Junaid Hussain. He planned attacks against the West but was killed by a US drone in 2015.
Jones, from Chatham, Kent, helped recruit women to IS, encouraged UK attacks and forced her son Jojo to carry out executions.
Major General Chip Chapman, the former MoD head of counter terror, said she would have been a “significant” target as a result of her alliance with Hussain and her IS role.
Referring to reports her son was killed in the strike, he added: “Even if he got up to really bad things, he shouldn’t have been targeted.
“We don’t know for sure whether he was with her or not.”
Jones’s stepfather Terry Lynch, who previously said “the sooner they blow her up the better”, could not be contacted yesterday. Her brother Patrick refused to comment.
Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said Britons fighting with Islamic State in Syria are a “legitimate target” for drone strikes.
But Jeremy Corbyn was criticised after refusing to say if he would have agreed to kill Jones. The Labour leader said it was “difficult to give an answer to the hypothetical question.