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'Lyrical terrorist' spared jail
07/12/2007 07:26 - (SA)
London - A woman who called herself the "Lyrical Terrorist" and penned poems with titles including How to Behead was spared jail on Thursday, after being convicted under British anti-terrorism laws.
Judge Peter Beaumont, sitting at London's Central Criminal Court, gave 23-year-old unemployed Samina Malik a nine-month suspended jail sentence and 100 hours' community service.
The suspended sentence means that if she commits a further offence in the next 18 months, she is liable to go to jail, he added.
Malik, a former "airside" shop worker at London's main Heathrow airport, was found guilty at the same court on November 8 of possessing records likely to be useful in terrorism.
Prosecutors described her as a "committed Islamic extremist who supports terrorism and terrorists". But she denied the accusation, saying she only used the nickname because she thought it was "cool".
A police search of her home in Southall, west London, in October found a document in which she said she wanted "the opportunity to take part in the blessed, sacred duty of jihad", her trial was told.
Other documents discovered were entitled How To Win In Hand To Hand Combat, How To Make Bombs and Sniper Manual plus The Al-Qaeda Manual and instructions for making poisons.
On a social networking site, Malik said she liked "watching videos by my Muslim brothers in Iraq, yep the beheading ones, watching videos by Osama bin Laden... and other videos which show massacres of the kaffirs (infidels)".
Some sections of Britain's 1.6-million-strong Muslim community said she should not have been prosecuted, describing her actions as foolish and certainly offensive, but not criminal.
But police and prosecutors said she was not prosecuted for writing poetry, but for amassing a "library" of extremist material "without reasonable excuse".
- AFP
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