Smith’s appeal against Isis case prison term fails
FORMER soldier Lisa Smith is to remain in prison for membership of the terrorist group Islamic State after a bid to overturn her 15-month sentence was rejected by the Court of Appeal.
Delivering the judgment of the three-judge court yesterday morning, Judge John Edwards said the judges of the Special Criminal Court who tried, convicted and sentenced Smith had shown ‘scrupulous fairness and appropriate regard to the evidence’.
Following the judgment, Smith’s lawyers indicated that they want to appeal her conviction as soon as possible. Her case will be mentioned again on March 24.
With ordinary remission on her 15-month sentence and taking into account one month she spent in custody on her return to Ireland in 2019, the 41-year-old mother-of-one is due for release on May 27.
Last year, she became the first person to be convicted in an Irish court of an Islamic terrorist offence committed abroad when the Special Criminal Court found that she joined Isis when she travelled to Syria in 2015. Smith, from Dundalk, Co. Louth, had pleaded not guilty to membership of an unlawful terrorist group, Islamic State, between October 28, 2015 and December 1, 2019.
Sentencing her to 15 months in prison, Judge Tony Hunt noted last October that while Smith is a low risk for reoffending, she was persistent and determined in her efforts to travel to Syria and join Isis and has shown no remorse for her actions.
In rejecting the appeal on all grounds at the Court of Appeal yesterday, Judge Edwards noted the ‘clear evidence’ of Islamic State’s ‘brutality, intolerance and extreme violence’.
He said the court accepted that Smith’s role with Isis was ‘wholly passive’, but he added: ‘The mere fact that she travelled to Syria, in circumstances where the evidence establishes that she travelled with her eyes open and with knowledge of what Islamic State stood for... was an overt expression of support for that organisation.’