Irish ex-soldier jailed for 15 months for joining IS

GBNews24 Desk//

Dublin’s Special Criminal Court on Friday sentenced former soldier Lisa Smith to 15 months in jail for joining Islamic State (IS) in Syria, reports AFP.

Judge Tony Hunt said the 40-year-old mother of one, from Dundalk on Ireland’s east coast, was a low risk for reoffending.

But he said Smith, a Muslim convert, went to Syria with her “eyes wide open” and had shown no remorse for her actions.

Smith, who arrived at court wearing a black hijab, was convicted in May of belonging to IS between 2015 and 2019.

She is the first person to be convicted in an Irish court of an Islamic terrorist offense committed abroad.

Smith could have faced a maximum sentence of eight years for membership of a proscribed terrorist organization.

Judge Hunt rejected her lawyer’s plea to impose a suspended sentence but heeded his call for a jail term at the lower end of the scale.

Her legal team has asked the court to allow Smith to be released on bail, pending an appeal.

Smith was acquitted by three judges on a separate charge of financing terrorism by sending 800 euros ($810) to aid medical treatment for a Syrian man in Turkey.

During her nine-week trial, prosecutors outlined how Smith — who was a member of the Irish Defense Forces from 2001 to 2011 — traveled to IS territory in 2015 following a conversion to Islam.
The court was told that she bought a one-way ticket from Dublin to Turkey, crossed the border into Syria and lived in Raqqa.

At the time, the hard-line Islamists ruled over vast swathes of Syria and Iraq, attracting thousands of foreign fighters to their cause before the group’s territorial defeat in the region.