First woman suicide bomb plotter targeted St Paul’s
Guilty plea of Muslim convert who schemed to ‘kill as many as she could’
A MUSLIM convert yesterday admitted plotting to become Britain’s first solo female suicide bomber by blowing up St Paul’s Cathedral for Islamic State.
Safiyya Amira Shaikh, 36, who was born Michelle Ramsden and was once a trainee mechanic, was snared by undercover police as she plotted to plant two bombs at the cathedral and a nearby hotel.
The mother, of Hayes, west London, pleaded guilty to preparing terrorist acts and dissemination of terrorist publications at the Old Bailey yesterday.
The benefits claimant, who is also a former actress and dental nurse, contacted someone she believed to be a bombmaker online and arranged to meet them in central London with two bags – one for each device.
Shaikh stayed at a hotel in the capital while she carried out reconnaissance, looking for the ‘best place’ to plant the explosives. The former carer also prepared the words of a pledge of allegiance to IS, and shared terrorist propaganda via groups using the Telegram messaging app. The court was told Shaikh ‘intended to kill herself and as many other people as possible’.
Prosecutors said she ‘explicitly believes in terrorism in the name and creed of socalled Islamic State’.
They added: ‘Shaikh planned to commit a terrorist act herself, involving obtaining improvised explosives in two bags she provided, to be passed to an explosives expert and then returned.
‘She had selected the main target as St Paul’s Cathedral and visited the cathedral to scope its security and the best place to detonate a bomb, by which she intended to kill herself and as many other people as possible.’
For two months, she is also said to have been a ‘leading operator/administrator’ of at least one Telegram channel which praised IS, encouraged terrorism and provided guidance and instruction on different means of committing acts of terrorism. She created a false persona as a man, using fake emails, and instructed other administrators so they could continue after her suicide bombing.
Shaikh had stated her main aim was to kill as many people as possible in a suicide attack on the 345-year- old cathedral designed by Sir Christopher Wren, the prosecution said.
She confided her plot to only two people, who were undercover officers posing as an explosives expert and his wife, to whom she handed the bags.
She told the officer: ‘I want to kill a lot. I would like to do church... a day like Christmas or Easter good, kill more. I always send threats. But I want to make threats real.’
Shaikh was born to a nonMuslim family and converted to Islam in 2007, changing her name shortly after.
She began to follow more extremists online and had been radicalised by 2015, the prosecution said.
In September last year she revealed her plan to stay in a hotel near St Paul’s and then check out the cathedral and ‘take photos like a tourist’.
On September 24 she met the fake explosives experts wife in Uxbridge, west London, to hand over her bags.
Then on October 13, the female undercover officer cancelled a second meeting and police forced their way into Shaikh’s flat to arrest her.
In a police interview, the defendant admitted posting extremist material and the plot, although she said she may not have gone through with it.
Mr Justice Sweeney said Shaikh will be remanded in custody at Bronzefield prison in Surrey before she is sentenced in May.
‘I want to make my threats real’