Daesh sympathiser sentenced at Birmingham court
A 26 year-old British mother, described previously as a bright former college student, took her toddler son to Syria and has now been jailed for six years for joining Daesh.
Tareena Shakil – who lived in Birmingham and was originally from Burton on Trent – secretly left Britain in October 2014 to join the self-declared caliphate.
Shockingly, she posed her little boy for pictures wearing an IS-branded balaclava in what a judge described as one of the most ‘abhorrent’ features of the case.
After a two-week Birmingham Crown Court trial which finished on Friday, Tareena was convicted of membership and encouraging acts of terror in Twitter posts made before she travelled.
The Recorder of Birmingham added: “You were well aware that the future which you had subjected your son to was very likely to be indoctrination and thereafter life as a terrorist fighter.”
The judge told Shakil it was clear she had been ‘radicalised’ following online conversations with prominent members of the terrorist group.
He said: “You had followed tweets and other statements from radical preachers and terrorists and formed your views from those and from discussions you had with a known terrorist, and who you described as being involved in the training of terrorist fighters for Isis.”
The judge said she had planned her flight to the capital of Raqqa and researched travelling in secret.
“Exactly what occurred in Raqqa is far from clear,” he added.
“You told lie after lie to the police and in court between February and November 2015, including that you were kidnapped, were not responsible for any tweets and any incriminating photographs were staged against your will.
“You pleaded not guilty and told more lies to the jury which they have understandably rejected.”
The judge described Shakil’s decision to involve her young son, who was only 14-months-old at the time of travel, as a serious aggravating factor.
“Most alarming…is the fact that you took your son and how he was used,” he said.
“The most abhorrent photographs, however, were those taken of your son wearing a balaclava with an ISIS logo and specifically the photograph of your son, no more than a toddler, standing next to an AK47 under a title which, translated from the Arabic, means ‘father of the British jihad’.”
The father of Shakil told ITV News Central that she made a ‘mistake’ but that she was not a terrorist.
