Briton sent to jail for trying to go to Syria ...to fight against IS
A BRITISH teenage girl has been jailed for terrorism offences for trying to travel to Syria – even though she was attempting to join the fight against Islamic State.
Silhan Ozcelik, 18, fled Britain last year, leaving a video in which she told her parents that she intended to join an outlawed Kurdish group battling IS jihadis in Syria. But during a landmark trial, Ozcelik claimed she only ran away from home because she was trying to avoid an arranged marriage after falling in love with a man ten years her senior.
The teenager had taken to wearing make-up and had laser hair- removal before leaving Britain. Her barrister, Peter Rowlands, asked the jury: ‘Is this really the first recorded case of a militant wanting a Brazilian before going into action?’
But despite this, Ozcelik – whose parents are Kurdish – became the first Briton convicted of trying to join a Kurdish group at the Old Bailey last week and was jailed for 21 months ‘for preparation of terrorist acts’.
Before she left Britain, Ozcelik made a video saying she supported the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and dubbed herself the ‘Bride of the Mountains’.
She fled her family home in Highbury, North London, just over a year ago and boarded a Eurostar train to Brussels. Her parents discovered a letter she had left which said: ‘As you read this letter at this moment I will have joined the PKK ranks.
‘I am so happy right now that I have become a militant.’
In the video she added: ‘My fight, my struggle is not just for the Kurdish people. It is for all people, for all women. I will always completely dedicate myself to liberating people.’
Ozcelik referred to the besieged Kurdish city of Kobane, which was under attack by IS, and said: ‘Maybe I will go to Kobane… It is up to the PKK to decide, but I see myself as a fighter, I see myself as a militant, a guerrilla.’
When she flew back to Stansted from Cologne, Germany, three months later she was arrested by police.
Dan Pawson-Pounds, prosecuting, said there was no evidence that Ozcelik succeeded in joining the PKK or that she went to either Turkey or Syria. He said: ‘The prosecution’s case against this defendant is that she was travelling to Europe in preparation to join a proscribed terrorist organisation with the intention of fighting in pursuit of a political or ideological cause.’
Ozcelik told the court that in March 2014, she met Mehmet Emin Orhan, who was ten years her senior. She eventually followed him when he moved back to Belgium. But she discovered that he had another girlfriend and she ended up doing all the housework.
Ozcelik’s arrest last year sparked protests by Britain’s Kurdish community, with demonstrations outside Holloway Prison, where she was being held.