Jihadi bride Lisa Smith walks free from jail early after having child with ISIS fighter
JIHADI bride Lisa Smith who had a child with an ISIS fighter has walked free from prison early.
The former soldier, 42, was locked up for 15 months last year after being found guilty of joining the notorious terror group.
But she walked out the gates of Ireland’s medium security Limerick Prison on Wednesday afternoon for good behaviour.
Smith was described as a model prisoner on the women’s wing and was granted early release after being convicted in July 2022.
She was the first person to be convicted in an Irish court of an Islamic terrorist offence committed abroad.
The mum was a member of the Irish Defence Forces for a decade, but applied to be discharged from the force in 2011 when she converted to Islam.
She explained there were contradictions between her faith and her work, such as not being allowed to wear a hijab.
Smith then left her home in Dundalk, Co Louth and flew from Dublin to Turkey before crossing into an IS-controlled area of Syria in 2015.
She later met and married British jihadi Sajid Aslam, but he was ultimately killed in fighting.
The pair shared a daughter, now 6, who has been left in the care of Smith’s family.
Despite her military training, the jihadi bride claimed she never fought for ISIS and spent four years living in squalid refugee camps.
She was arrested in December 2019 after arriving back in Ireland from Turkey with her then-two-year-old daughter.
The mum told police she had been brainwashed into believing she would burn in hell for eternity if she did not travel to join the terror group.
“I had enough, I did my time. It was a prison. It was four years in prison, that’s the way we look at it now”, she said.
Judge Tony Hunt said Smith had headed to Syria “with her eyes open” and pledged allegiance to the group.
The maximum sentence for membership of a terrorist group is eight years in prison, but she was only handed 15 months.
The judge set her offence at the lower end of the scale but noted that “it is nonetheless serious” for an Irish citizen to take up allegiance with a terrorist organisation and persist with it.
He said there was evidence she may have been “easily led” but she had also shown resilience and determination to join and remain with Isis “to the bitter end”.
Mr Justice Hunt noted Smith had a difficult time in Syria before being brought back to Ireland but added that this was a “foreseeable consequence of her choice to attach herself to ISIS.”
He added: “In future her focus will be her daughter, therefore the likelihood of re-offending is low.”
Yet Smith rejected calls made by former jihadists that she “free herself from the psychological mental prison of Islam” before she was jailed last year.
She told the Sunday World: “That’s not going to happen, no! I love my religion, it’s what I live for now.”