Teenage jihadist jailed for bomb plots on London
A JUDGE has jailed a teenager who was part of Britain’s first all-female terror cell for life after rejecting her claims that she had renounced her jihadism.
Sentencing Safaa Boular to a minimum of 13 years at the Old Bailey, Judge Mark Dennis QC said despite having been groomed by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), the 18-year-old remained responsible for her actions.
Boular was found guilty in June of two counts of preparing terrorist acts after she plotted with her sister and mother to attack tourists and Londoners at targets including the British Museum and the Palace of Westminster.
Judge Dennis said: “In my view there’s insufficient evidence upon which it would be safe to conclude at this stage that the defendant is a truly transformed individual and the serious risk that she has posed hitherto has now evaporated. However much she may have been influenced and drawn into her extremism, it appeared she knew what she was doing and acted with open eyes.”
Boular was first stopped by police on Aug 16 2016, when she returned from a holiday in Morocco. She admitted that she wanted to go to Syria to marry Naweed Hussain, an Isil fighter. Her passport was seized, but lacking evidence that she planned any offence, she was allowed home to Vauxhall, London.
Her mobile phone, which she used to contact her “husband” in Syria, was seized and on it was found downloaded videos of women wearing suicide belts.
Boular began to plot the attack on the British Museum using code words for guns and grenades, and took delivery of a replacement phone hidden inside a heart-shaped chocolate box.
Using encrypted messages, she contacted Hussain, 32. After he was killed in a US drone strike, Boular told her plan to undercover secret service officers who were posing as extremists.
She was arrested on April 12 last year but went on to discuss the plans with her sister, Rizlaine Boular, 22, and mother Mina Dich, 43. Picking up where Boular left off, Rizlaine and Dich visited Westminster and bought knives and a rucksack. On April 27 last year, fearing an attack was imminent, armed police moved in and, during the raid in Willesden Green, north-west London, Rizlaine was shot and injured. She was jailed for life with a minimum term of 16 years, having admitted preparing acts of terrorism. Dich, 44, was imprisoned for six years and nine months with an additional five years on licence for assisting in the plot. Safaa Boular, one of the youngest women to be convicted of terrorism offences in the UK, betrayed no emotion as she was jailed.
Joel Bennathan QC, her barrister, said she had been “groomed” into radicalism but had since shunned Islamist extremism and no longer followed the Muslim faith. He said: “That’s the point about teenagers – they can change dramatically and fast.”