The glamour model who claims she was groomed by IS to be new White Widow
A FORMER glamour model has told how she was brainwashed by a British-born Islamic State recruiter on Facebook.
Kimberley Miners believes she was being groomed as the next White Widow after Sally Jones, the British mother who came an IS poster girl.
Miss Miners, 29, shared dozens of horrific propaganda images and videos online after Naweed Hussain befriended her on the internet. His messages urging her to join him in Syria were uncovered by MI5 and she was arrested.
But in January she was told she would not be charged after admitting being ‘taken in’ by Hussain’s drive to groom a new generation of UK jihadi brides.
Miss Miners, from Bradford, who has appeared topless in a tabloid newspaper, had embraced Islam and began using the name Aisha Lauren al-Britaniya. She also wore a full veil and posted online images of Muslim women brandishing rifles.
Hussain lavished her with attention and made her feel special during a low period after she had lost a baby and split up with her millionaire fiance.
But she later discovered Hussain, who was originally from Coventry of Pakistani heritage, was grooming up to ten other women online.
One was Safaa Boular, 18, who this month became the youngest woman to be convicted of planning a UK terror attack. She and Hussain married over Skype and planned an atrocity to target civilians with grenades and a pistol.
Hussain fled to Syria in 2015 and was later killed in a drone strike. Speaking about her actions for the first time, Miss Miners said she was ‘ashamed’ and being arrested was a ‘slap in the face’.
She said: ‘I could so easily have been Safaa Boular. I’m lucky I was arrested when I was. I was totally taken in. I was groomed and I fell for it.
‘I was a propaganda trophy to be won, the next Sally Jones. And they wanted me at all costs. I dread to think what would have happened.’
Sally Jones, a former punk rocker from Chatham, Kent, went to Syria in 2013 with her son Jojo, nine, to join IS after meeting a British jihadist online. She is thought to have been killed in a US drone strike last year.
Miss Miners, who now has a young child herself, said Hussain contacted her after she started sharing posts highlighting the plight of children in Syria.
‘Hussain lavished me with attention and flattery and even persuaded me to change my name to Aisha Lauren al-Britaniya because it was more authentic,’ she told The Sun.
‘He’d say “If you came here I’d make you my wife”. We swapped hundreds of messages every day.’
Miss Miners was born to Christian parents and brought up in the affluent Low Moor area of Bradford. She did her first glamour shoot aged 18 and by 2015 was engaged to a millionaire and pregnant. But she lost the baby because of a rare complication and they split up.
‘My hopes and dreams had been shattered,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t been on social media for ages but I went back on and that’s where it all began.
‘I was upset by what was happening in Syria. I started sharing videos of bomb attacks in the hope of showing people what was going on. I started receiving lots of friend requests from people in Syria. It’s embarrassing now but I liked the attention. I’d been so lonely.
‘There were girls in Britain and Syria, IS fighters, jihadi brides. I’d speak to them all every day. The more I read, the more I believed.’
Miss Miners shared violent IS videos as Aisha al-Britaniya on Facebook. In 2015 police warned her about the links with Hussain and she began a terrorism prevention course but dropped out.
Hussain then tried to persuade her to go to Syria via Turkey. Days after these messages in October 2016, MI5 raided her home and took her phone.
She was warned she faced ten years in prison. Detectives had all the messages with Hussain and material he sent her, including a bomb-making manual.
‘It was like something slapped me in the face. The people I was talking to were known terrorists. I started to feel ashamed of myself. I still do,’ she said.
After 15 months on bail, Miss Miners was told she would not face any action. A few weeks later Hussain was killed.
She said she was not looking for sympathy but wanted to stop others being taken in. ‘People have no idea but IS is actively searching Facebook for vulnerable people,’ she warned.
‘Swapped hundreds of messages every day’