A former Irish soldier who joined ISIS in Syria as a jihadi bride has been sentenced to 15 months in prison.
The sentence was delivered today at the Special Criminal Court in Belfast to Lisa Smith, 40, who was referred to during the trial as a “propaganda weapon” for ISIS.
The mother of one from Dundalk on Ireland’s east coast, according to Judge Tony Hunt, posed a low chance of reoffending.
He claimed that Smith, a former Christian who converted to Islam, entered Syria with her “eyes wide open” and had no regret for her acts.
Smith was found guilty in May of participating in the outlawed terror organisation between 2015 and 2019. She wore a black hijab to court.
She is the first individual to have been found guilty in an Irish court of an overseas act of jihadist terrorism.
Smith could have received a maximum eight-year term for joining a banned terrorist group.
She married Sajid Aslam in a province of Syria under the control of IS in 2015 after departing the Irish military in 2011 and converting to Islam four years earlier.
Judge Hunt denied her attorney’s request for a suspended sentence but agreed to a jail term on the lighter end of the spectrum.
Smith’s legal team has requested that she be released on bail while they pursue an appeal.
On a different charge of funding terrorism by providing 800 euros ($810) to help a Syrian man receive medical care in Turkey, Smith was found not guilty by three judges.
Prosecutors described how Smith, who served in the Irish Defence Forces from 2001 to 2011, travelled to IS territory in 2015 after converting to Islam during her nine-week trial.
She visited the Muslim holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and posted on an Islamic Facebook page that she wanted to live under Sharia rule and die a martyr.
She reportedly bought a one-way ticket from Dublin to Turkey, crossed the border into Syria, and then settled in Raqqa, the self-declared capital of the IS caliphate, according to testimony given in court.
Prior to the group’s territorial defeat in the region, the hardline Islamists attracted hundreds of foreign fighters to their cause when they controlled large portions of Syria and Iraq.
Smith was compelled to evacuate Raqa and then Baghouz, IS’s final stronghold, before returning to Ireland when the group lost territory to a US-led coalition on the battlefield and the towns and cities under its control were destroyed.
On December 1, 2019, as she arrived at Dublin Airport with her little daughter, she was detained.
Her attorney Michael O’Higgins requested during the sentencing hearing that she not be sentenced to jail because she had previously completed a custodial sentence in Syrian camps.
He made reference to Smith’s severe psychological condition after she was labelled “damaged” and “vulnerable” in expert assessments, highlighting the “appalling” circumstances she had to deal with while caring for her young child.
Smith was detained in northern Syria’s notorious Al-Hawl and Ain Issa refugee camps while she awaited repatriation to Ireland, the court heard.
O’Higgins described how IS members in the camps subjected other refugees to harsh penalties, in some cases killing them by setting fire to their tents.
The defence attorney also requested that the court take into account the fact that Smith has been subject to a daily curfew of 13 hours as part of her release conditions since 2019.