LONDON
A woman has been jailed in the U.K. after being found guilty of trying to fund alleged terrorists in Syria in the first case of its kind in the country.
Amal El-Wahabi, 27 - the wife of Muslim convert Aine Davis who is believed to be fighting against the Assad regime in Syria - was sentenced at the Old Bailey in London on Thursday to 28 months and seven days in jail.
She had been found guilty in August of giving €20,000 ($25,000) to a friend, Nawal Msaad, 27, whom she had enlisted to smuggle the money to Syria.
Msaad was caught at Heathrow airport in January as she tried to board a flight to Turkey but acquitted of any charges in August.
El-Wahabi was found guilty at the same trial of duping Msaad into carrying the money.
- Wife 'infatuated'
El-Wahabi told the court that her husband had left her and her two young children to live abroad in July 2013.
The prosecution claimed that her husband had joined a rebel group in Syria and showed pictures which El-Wahabi’s husband had sent to her of himself wearing a balaclava, as well as others of him wearing military fatigues and brandishing a Kalashnikov.
Judge Nicholas Hilliard told El-Wahabi he accepted she had had funded terrorism as she was infatuated with her husband.
El-Wahabi had met Davis, a convert to Islam and a former drug dealer with a conviction for possessing a firearm, when she was 17 at a mosque in London.
She told the court that the money was to help her husband buy a new house in Turkey and they were going to start a new life in the country.
- Divorce pressure
The court was shown Whatsapp message exchanges between El-Wahabi and her husband which showed her desperation.
In one she wrote: "Pls come bk ... I have two kids to think about ... I'm like the mum n dad, it's bloody hard."
Davis replied, "Allah will reward you abundantly, just be patient."
Davis also threatened El-Wahabi with taking a second wife, which seemed to put further pressure on her.
She wrote in another message: "I will come so we don’t get divorced. I won’t be able to deal with dat."
El-Wahabi, who is of Moroccan decent and lives in London, was found guilty of making money available with “reasonable cause to suspect that it would or may be used for the purposes of terrorism”.
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