LONDON: A London teenager was jailed for life on Friday for plotting a terror attack, becoming the youngest woman to be sentenced for terrorism offences in Britain.

Safaa Boular, 18, who together with her mother and elder sister formed the country’s first all-female cell linked to the militant Islamic State group, will spend a minimum of 13 years in prison.

She had planned violent attacks in the British capital, using coded language themed around a tea party, after UK authorities stopped her travelling to Syria to marry an IS fighter she had met online.

“However much she may have been influenced and drawn into her extremism, it appeared she knew what she was doing and acted with open eyes,” said judge Mark Dennis in sentencing her at London’s Old Bailey.

“Her views were deeply entrenched,” he added, rejecting claims she had renounced extremism.

In June sibling Rizlaine Boular, 22, was also jailed for life, with a minimum term of 16 years, while their Morocco-born mother Mina Dich was handed a minimum sentence of six years and nine months for aiding the plots.

Published in Dawn, August 4th, 2018