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Terrorist's wife spared jail by judge

The wife of an ISIS terrorist has received a suspended jail term for trying to supply him with clothes and toiletries to help him fight in Syria.

File

File image. Source: AAP

Fatima Elomar left home with her four children and suitcases full of items to help her notorious Islamic State terrorist husband fight in Syria.

Two years later, the 31-year-old has left a Sydney court as a widow with a criminal conviction but without an order to spend time in jail.

In imposing a suspended prison term of two years three months, Judge Penelope Hock said the offending was at the low end of seriousness and Elomar appeared to be rehabilitated.

"I am satisfied that the offender's husband was dominant in the relationship and overbearing towards her," she said in the NSW District Court on Friday.

Elomar pleaded guilty to soliciting goods in April and May 2014 with the intention of supporting Mohamed Elomar's entry into Syria where he was engaged in hostile activities.

Mohamed Elomar and his friend Khaled Sharrouf gained notoriety in 2014 when they posed for photos holding the severed heads of enemy fighters.

Fatima Elomar was with her children, aged from five weeks to eight years, when she was arrested at Sydney International airport after checking into an international flight in May 2014.

Her luggage contained camouflage clothing, thermal socks, toiletries such as anti-dandruff shampoo, solar watches and cables.

In emails to his wife, Elomar had given her "advice, orders and instructions" of equipment he wanted her to buy and bring to him overseas, the judge said.

Her QC, Greg James, argued that the items were not to make her husband "a more effective warrior", unlike guns or ammunition, but to make him more comfortable.

But the judge said Elomar knew her husband was fighting and although they were everyday items, they were capable of helping him take part in the armed hostilities.

Mohamed Elomar has since been killed in a drone strike.

In the days before her arrest, Elomar wrote to her husband saying: "It's going to be thrill ride innit" to which he replied: "yes babe".

But weeks earlier, after he sent her images of a leg with a shrapnel wound, Fatima asks: "Babe will you ever consider coming back home???"

Mr James had submitted that Elomar would have gone to Syria if her husband asked her to accompany him.

"We accept that she was concerned to maintain her marriage and, on her view of her faith, to accept the direction of her husband, the head of the family."


3 min read

Published

Source: AAP



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