The former soldier was accused of belonging to the Islamic State
On Monday, Irish Judge Lisa Smith accused him of joining a jihadist group. The facts are pre-2015.
This photo, taken on January 8, 2020, shows Lisa Smith attending her trial in Dublin Federal Criminal Court. (File image)
AFP / Paul Confidence
A former Irish soldier was convicted on Monday of belonging to a terrorist organization after the Irish justice system found him loyal to the jihadist group Islamic State during a trip to Syria in 2015.
He cried tears during the announcement of the decision and was released until his scheduled sentence of July 11 was announced. Irish Special Court Judge Tony Hunt, a former soldier, believed Syria had knowingly gone to an area controlled by the IS.
To die a martyr
Lisa Smith has pleaded not guilty in this unique case in Ireland, which involved facts from October 2015 to the end of 2019.
During the nine-week trial, prosecutors sought to prove how Lisa Smith, who served in the military from 2001 to 2011, traveled to an IS-controlled area in 2015 after converting to Islam.
In 2012, he made a pilgrimage to Mecca and expressed his desire on Facebook to live under Sharia and die a martyr. He is accused of joining IS and later settling in Raqqa, Syria, which is controlled by the jihadist group, and marrying a British man who took part in the group’s armed patrols.
“Foreign Fighter”
He was returning to the Irish capital after the fall of the last stronghold of IS in 2019 and was arrested when he arrived at Dublin airport with his young daughter. His lawyer, Michael O. Higgins, pleaded that his client’s presence in the IS-controlled area was not in fact a member of the jihadist organization.
He considered it wrong to describe anyone who traveled to an area controlled by IS as a “foreign fighter”, regardless of the role they actually played. The lawyer added that maintaining a house for her husband, Lisa Smith, was the only act that could be arguably “a kind of aid” to ISIS.
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