British woman who took toddler to join IS jailed for 6 years

During a two-week trial at Birmingham Crown Court, 26-year-old Shakil had denied the charges, claiming she only travelled to Syria because of a wish to live under the rule of sharia law.

The court heard that Shakil was radicalized online and in October 2014 told her family she was going to Turkey for a beach holiday.

The judge described Shakil’s decision to involve her son, who was 14 months old at the time of travel, as a serious aggravating factor.

Her father was quoted by the broadcaster as saying her family meant to appeal the conviction, labeling Shakil’s radicalization a “mistake”.

In Raqqa, she stayed in a house with other women and posed in photographs with assault rifles and handguns.

Tareena Shakil, 26, is the first British woman to return from the self-declared caliphate to be convicted of the offence. At first she claimed that she had been kidnapped but later admitted this was a lie.

But a photo on her phone showed her posing with a firearm and wearing an Islamic State balaclava, and another photo showed her posing in Syria under the group’s flag.

Police said it was not known why she left Syria in January 2015.

“Our assessment is that she was not naïve; she had absolutely clear intentions when she left the United Kingdom, sending tweets encouraging the public to commit acts of terrorism here and then taking her young child to join Daesh in Syria”.

Shakil, who was working on a two-year hospitality management degree at the London School of Business and Finance, used a $1,700 loan payout to buy plane tickets for herself and her toddler son. That’s who she wanted to be: “a somebody, not a nobody”.

Shakil, of Beechfield Road in Birmingham but formerly of Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire, told her father three weeks before her escape: “I can leave but I don’t want (to)”.

The sentencing judge, Melbourne Inman, said that Shakil showed no remorse that her son may have become an ISIS militant in the future.

After the jury returned its verdict, West Midlands police said they believed she presented a real threat to the UK.