All-female Isil gang planned murder at the British Museum
Court hears how teenager wanted to ‘martyr’ herself in bomb attack after death of Isil fighter fiancé in Syria
AN ALL-FEMALE Isil gang plotted to murder tourists at attractions including the British Museum, a court has heard.
Safaa Boular, 18, planned to “martyr” herself in a bomb and grenade ambush on the museum after her fiancé, a fighter with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, was killed in Syria.
In what is alleged to be Britain’s first all-female terrorist plot, she was supported by her mother, Mina Dich, 43, and elder sister, Rizlaine, 21. But when Safaa Boular was arrested for an earlier attempt to go to Syria to marry Naweed Hussain, she passed the baton to Rizlaine, who began plotting a knife attack in Westminster.
The Old Bailey heard that both sisters had tried to go to Syria to wed Isil fighters. Rizlaine was caught in 2014 but never charged and was returned to the UK, while Safaa attempted the journey two years later.
She declared love for Hussain after the couple had chatted on social media for three months, prosecutor Duncan Atkinson QC said, and planned to go to Raqqa, where they would don suicide belts and, in Hussain’s words, “depart the world holding hands and taking others with them”, jurors heard. After police uncovered Safaa’s plan to travel in August 2016, she allegedly switched her attention to an attack on Britain, keeping in contact with Hussain through encrypted messages on a secret phone. But British security services had deployed trained “role play” officers to engage in online communication with the pair, jurors heard.
Mr Atkinson said: “Both Hussain and Safaa Boular talked of a planned ambush involving grenades and or firearms.” She also told an officer posing as an Isil fighter that all she needed was a “car and a knife to get what I want to achieve”, the court heard. Mr Atkinson added: “It appears she planned to launch an attack against members of the public selected largely at random in the environs of that cultural jewel and most popular of tourist attractions, the British Museum, in central London.”
An attack would have caused at least “widespread panic” and was intended to injure and kill, it was claimed.
On learning Hussain had been killed in April 2017, she was allegedly encouraged by her mother and sister to join him as a “martyr”.
But within days of his death she was charged over her earlier plans to go to Syria in 2016, so was unable to carry out her “chilling intentions”, the prosecutor said. But she did not abandon them. He went on: “Rather, she sought to encourage her sister Rizlaine to carry the torch forward in her stead.”
The court also heard that Safaa’s intended attack involved using a “tokarev”, a type of Russian pistol, or a grenade, referred to as “pineapples”.
In calls from jail, she talked about a “party” with her sister, which was said to be a code word for a terror attack her sister was planning in her place. The pair also made reference to a “Mad Hatter” and having an “Alice In Wonderland” themed tea party, jurors heard.
Rizlaine and her mother carried out reconnaissance on major landmarks in Westminster and bought a pack of knives and a rucksack, the court heard.
But on April 27 last year – the day of the proposed attack around the Palace of Westminster – police swooped. Rizlaine Boular, of Clerkenwell, London, has already admitted planning an attack in Westminster, allegedly involving knives. Her mother provided “positive assistance and support”, knowing her daughter would commit an attack, but did not necessarily understand it would involve death or injury, the court heard.
Police recovered extremist material from Safaa’s phones, including photos of women holding guns, one of a child wearing a suicide belt, and images and videos of beheadings, the court heard.
She also told police she had struck up a friendship with Isil’s female recruiter, Umm Isa Al-amriki, in Aleppo.
Covert recordings from her mother’s home in Vauxhall, south London, recorded her laughing about laying flowers at Westminster Bridge after the terror attack there.
Safaa Boular denies two counts of preparing acts of terrorism.
In calls, she spoke about a ‘party’, said to be a code word for a terror attack