White Widow terrorist ‘killed in US drone strike’
BRITAIN’S most wanted female terrorist, Sally Jones, nicknamed the White Widow, has reportedly been killed in a drone strike.
The fugitive jihadist, who was once a punk rock singer, was said to have been killed in June in a US strike close to the border between Syria and Iraq.
For more than three years, Jones has been the world’s most wanted female terrorist. She fled to Syria from Kent in 2013 to marry computer hacker Junaid Hussain, an Isil fighter from Birmingham, and took her then 11-year-old son, Joe “Jojo” Dixon with her.
A Whitehall source last night told The Sun: “The Americans zapped her trying to get away from Raqqa. Quite frankly, it’s good riddance.”
CIA officials told their UK counterparts that a US Air Force Predator killed 50-year-old Jones in June.
It is not known if her son was with her. US intelligence chiefs say they cannot be 100 per cent certain that the strike killed Jones as there was no attempt to recover any of her DNA.
Jones had been a single mother-oftwo living on benefits when she met her future husband, then 19, online and became besotted with him.
Hussain told Jones he wanted to leave to join Isil and encouraged her to join him. Using the pseudonym Umm Hussain al-britani, Jones is believed to have recruited dozens of women to the terrorist group by boasting on social media of how wonderful life was in the caliphate.
She encouraged followers to carry out attacks against the West while defending Isil’s beheadings and vowing she would do the same.
Her partner was killed in a drone strike on his car in Aug 2015; she then became know as the White Widow.
Jones was believed to have been living in Raqqa with her son and was in charge of training all European female recruits, or “muhajirat”. Jones was entrusted with leading the secretive female wing of the Anwar al-awlaki battalion, a unit founded by her late husband that is composed solely of foreign fighters with the purpose of planning and executing attacks in the West. Last night it was revealed those involved in plotting terror offences will face more severe prison sentences, including a minimum three-year term to combat “low tech” attacks.
Anyone involved in preparing a terrorist incident, even if they are not at the heart of the scheme, can expect a sentence of between three to six years, the Sentencing Council is due to announce today.