Dublin’s Special Criminal Court just found former Irish soldier Lisa Smith guilty of joining the Islamic State (ISIS) group in Syria. Court says Smith had traveled to Syria ‘with eyes open’ and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group after ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi called on Muslims to travel to the country.
Irish Times Smith, a convert to Islam in 2007, was a member of the Irish Defence Forces from 2001 to 2011. She left the Irish military in 2011 after she converted to Islam, before traveling on a one-way ticket to an ISIS-controlled region in Syria where she married Sajid Aslam, the court heard. The prosecution says her husband, a UK national, carried out ‘border patrol’ work for ISIS, and that he ‘had done a snipers course on her advice.’
Lisa Smith’s taxi neared the roundabout where a man’s corpse with eyes gouged out hung from a cross. “Don’t look,” the driver warned, but Smith saw the lifeless body and the empty sockets. She wasn’t sure what his crime was, she would later tell gardaí, but he may have been a spy.
The crucifixion was carried out in Raqqa some time after June 2016, less than one year after Lisa Smith, having quit the Irish army, left her home in Dundalk to live inside the Islamic State. ISIS carried out many similar atrocities in Raqqa, the Islamic State’s capital city, following the announcement by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of a new caliphate that then spread through Iraq and Syria.
Extra One witness, Mr Gillane detailed how Ms Smith had been a member of the Irish Defence Forces from 2001 until 2011.
He said she converted to Islam in 2011 and applied for discharge, because of inconsistencies between her faith and her professional role in the army. In particular, she had been refused an application to be allowed to wear a hijab, the court heard.
Mr Gillane said, will say that Ms Smith expressed ‘joy at being in Syria’ and wanted to begin her ‘jihad’ and was prepared to die a martyr. In May 2015, Ms Smith sent €800 to a Syrian man living in Turkey, Mr Gillane said. The money, he said, was for the benefit of another, injured man who needed the money for his rehabilitation.
In October 2015, counsel said, Ms Smith bought a one-way ticket, paid for in cash, from Dublin to Turkey. She then crossed the border into an Isis-controlled area of Syria having lied to her family about where she was going, the court heard. She lived in Raqqa, the capital of the caliphate, the court was told.
At this time, Mr Gillane said, Ms Smith ‘implored her husband’ to join her and refused his entreaties for her to leave Syria. In 2016, she divorced her husband and in June of that year married a UK Muslim national who had travelled to Syria in 2014, the court heard.
Ms Smith remained in Raqqa until February 2017 when she moved to an area near the Iraq border and in June 2017 her daughter was born, it was heard.
More than a year later, Raqqa fell to allied forces and Ms Smith moved to Baghouz, the Islamic State’s last remaining stronghold until it fell in March 2019, the court heard. Following the fall of Baghouz, Ms Smith spoke to the FBI about her time in Syria and gave an interview to a journalist, the court was told. Mr Gillane said she returned to Ireland where she was arrested. She repeatedly denied being a member of a terrorist organization and denied doing anything to benefit a terrorist organisation, the court heard.
Mr Gillane said she subscribed to a relationship of allegiance and protection and ‘enveloped herself in the black flag of ISIS.’
Most watched with horror when video footage emerged of Isis fighters setting fire to a Jordanian pilot or locking men in cages to drown them or murder them with rockets. Smith watched those videos but said she didn’t know what was true and what were lies, staged to defame Muslims. She would insist over and over it was her religion that compelled her to go, not a desire to join a terrorist group or to use her army training to help ISIS spread their version of Islam by the sword.
ISIS PHOTOS:
She believed in hellfire, she said, and was certain that to disobey the call to the caliphate would be to disobey God and condemn herself to an eternity burning in the fires of hell.
According to female members of the mosque she attended, she liked to focus on the political side of Islam or the “harsh end of Islam.” At that time al Qaeda was in the news and Smith wanted to talk about jihad and justifying why suicide bombings were happening. Smith’s attitude was that “we are being attacked so we are attacking back. It was us and them.”
When Smith spoke of jihad, it was the “holy war jihad.” A friend of hers, Carol Karimah Duffy, a Dundalk woman who converted to Islam in 2001 recalled Smith saying she wanted a husband who would die “shahid” – as a martyr to the religion. According to Duffy, Smith told her sisters in the mosque it was important to push their husbands for shahid. Duffy added: “There are some who believe that if you die shahid it is the most honourable way for a Muslim to die.”
Her first marriage to a Muslim man lasted only months and was dogged by frequent arguments because Smith didn’t think her husband was religious enough. She wanted him to grow a beard, as part of the religion, but he called her a hypocrite for not wearing the hijab while on army duty.
Here are a few of the entries in Lisa Smith’s Facebook page, showing her gradual move into radical Islam.Many of her entries glorify ISIS and denounce Western liberal values.
Smith said it was at the Dundalk mosque she learned about the mujahideen in Afghanistan and ideas like American complicity in the 9/11 attacks or that Islam is “spread by the sword.” She accused Duffy of having “messed my mind with Islam”, telling her things like music, colorful clothes, talking to men or traveling without a male relative were “haram” – forbidden by Islam. She said she learned her role in the Irish army was haram; she might be posted to an area where Muslims were fighting and it would be haram for her to participate. She also claimed she was told paying taxes was forbidden because the money might be used to fund wars against other Muslims.
She was concerned that by not wearing the hijab while on Defence Forces duty she was committing a sin so she asked for special permission to be allowed to don the head and body covering. When her superior officers refused, she decided to leave the army and join ISIS.
ISIS bride Lisa Smith vows she’ll never give up Islam, saying ‘I love my religion.’
The Revealer says
The Muslim Islamic religion is all based on doing terrible actions of great physical violence; it’s a very barbaric; highly uncivilized “religion”.
Bugsy278 says
It’s simple, this ideology attracts the degenerates of society. Socio/psychopaths flock to islam for the freedom to hate, rape, and kill. Muslims that aren’t in favor of killing apostates end up leaving the faith when their eyes are opened, while society’s sickos join enmass. All other religions hell awaits the depraved, but in islam you get “paradise”.
Hartmut says
‘Why do so many converts to Islam end up joining Islamic terror groups?’
Because they profoundly blame western societies for their own failures and shortcomings and thus hate them to the bone.
Same with Muzzles failing to integrate, they try to take revenge by raping western females and randomly stabbing people in the streets or running their car into pedestrians. It is just the victim card played to the max.
Classy Infidel says
I think they might have a pre-existing nasty streak within their personality and only Islam and Sharia will satisfy them. But when these women discover that the men have a nastier streak toward women and they have no freedom, these women try to leave the ISIS flock.
Linda Rivera says
The reason why converts to Islam join Islamic terror groups is because the converts have evil hearts.
The converts are attracted to Islam by the extreme cruelty, barbarism and savagery of Islam. And love the power they have over their captured, defenseless victims.
They HATE God. They HATE the HOLY ONE. They Hate God’s Holy, Eternal Laws, the Ten Commandments that Almighty God, our Glorious, Majestic, Awesome, Precious Creator gave to His faithful Jewish servant, Moses.
The Laws that God gave thousands of years before the MURDER BLOOD CONQUEST Cult of Islam was invented.
Andrew+Blackadder says
She looks like a lovely wee lassie that went bat shit crazy and we have to wonder why, of course its easy enough to suggest because she converted to such a Fascist Religious Cult of death and Satan but that doesnt explain why that would attract her in the first place, so I guess she is the only person that can explain that, if she can without saying ” My religion,my religion”yada yada yada..
I find it rather ironic that such converts and muslims in general are all speaking crap about the Jews and America and Israel while they all use Facebook to spew their nonsense without thinking that Facebook is owned by a Jewish guy that lives in America.
To cut the head off a person while they are being hogtied and on their knees is the act of a coward but then muslims always appear to be cowards as they only attack four or five against one infidel.
Hello! says
Ah yes. Ireland, like them rest of Western Europe, is still bent over frontwards with the “Islam is one of the world’s great religions”, crap.
sixlittlerabbits says
How can this Irish POS “love” the hate-filled religion of Islam? She justifies the violence and accepts it. EWWW.
Dan says
“ Why do so many converts to Islam end up joining Islamic terror groups?”
My guess.
They have making up to do and points to prove. And the born Muslims just love having fresh cannon fodder.