Former Irish soldier Lisa Smith has been jailed for 15 months for being a member of Islamic State.
The 40-year-old, a former member of the Irish Defence Forces, was found guilty in May after a nine-week trial at the non-jury Special Criminal Court in Dublin.
Delivering the verdict, Judge Tony Hunt said the prosecution had established beyond reasonable doubt that she travelled to Syria “with her eyes open” and pledged allegiance to the group, then led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
The three-judge court acquitted Smith of a separate charge of financing terrorism by sending €800 (£680) towards medical treatment for a Syrian man in Turkey.
Smith, from Dundalk, County Louth, was a member of the Irish Defence forces from 2001 to 2011, when she converted to Islam.
She applied for discharge, the court heard, because of inconsistencies between her faith and her role in the army, in particular being refused permission to wear a hijab.
In October 2015, she bought a one-way ticket, travelled from Dublin to Turkey, and crossed the border into an IS-controlled area of Syria.
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The judge said the purpose of Smith’s travel to Syria was to consummate her burgeoning relationship with the Islamic State.
There, after a previous marriage ended, she married Sajid Aslam, a Briton whom the court was told “had done a sniper’s course on her advice”.
Smith had a daughter, born in June 2017, before she returned to Ireland in December 2019 after the collapse of Islamic State.
She was arrested at Dublin Airport and charged with terror offences.
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During her trial, the court was told that Smith had “endeavoured to access IS-controlled territory and sought out the means by which this could be done”.
The prosecution, said that Smith had “enveloped herself in the standard or black flag of Islamic State”.
