A former Irish soldier who travelled to Syria and became an ISIS bride was sentenced to 15 months in prison at a Dublin court on Friday.
Lisa Smith, 40, from Dundalk, County Louth, was found guilty in May of her membership with the ISIS terrorist group between Oct. 28th, 2015, and Dec. 1st, 2019, after a nine-week trial at Dublin’s Special Criminal Court.
But she was cleared of a separate charge of financing the group.
Smith is the first person to be prosecuted and convicted in Ireland over terror offences committed outside the country.
Smith served in the Irish Defence Force between 2001 to 2011. She converted to Islam in 2010 and left the army the next year after she was refused permission to wear the hijab.
According to fellow Islam convert Carol Karimah Duffy, who testified in court, Smith started speaking to an ISIS recruiter online and she was focusing on the “harsh end of Islam.”
Smith went to Syria in October 2015 after the ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi called on Muslims to go to the country.
Despite knowing she would end up being a housewife in Syria, Smith believed it was her religious obligation to live in the Islamic country, she later told Irish police officers.
In Syria, Smith married British jihadist Sajid Aslam, who Smith said was killed when fighting, and gave birth to a daughter in 2017.
After the fall of ISIS in 2019, Smith and her daughter were repatriated to Ireland and she was arrested at the Dublin airport.
Smith’s lawyer previously argued Smith should be given a suspended sentence, citing the abuse she had suffered during her marriage to Aslam, the detention she had endured in a Syrian camp before being returned to Ireland, and the strict bail conditions imposed on her for two-and-a-half years in Ireland.
O’Higgins SC also asked the court to consider Smith’s child and argued psychological reports on Smith presented “a picture of an extremely vulnerable person, but accompanying that vulnerability is a great level of stoicism in terms of dealing with whatever hand she’s been dealt with.”
Sentencing Smith, presiding judge Tony Hunt said he’s satisfied Smith is unlikely to re-offend.
The judge acknowledged the evidence showed Smith had “followed rather than led,” but said she had been determined to go to Syria.
“She may have been easily led but then displayed characteristics of resilience—the rejection of her family, travelling to Syria, and remaining there to the bitter end,” he said.
He also said that Smith had had a “tough time in Syria” but that it was a “foreseeable consequence” of joining ISIS.
Hunt said the three judges had taken into consideration Smith’s previous “good character” and the fact that she had made a “positive contribution to society during her military service.”
The judges also accepted that life in the Syrian camps was “arduous” and the “equivalent” of being in prison, and that they had given a “substantial” discount off Smith’s sentence because of this.
The maximum sentence for the offence is eight years.
