ISIS bride Lisa Smith and daughter, 2, to be ‘flown back to Ireland in secret mission’, promising ‘I won’t kill anyone’
AN operation to bring ISIS bride Lisa Smith and her two-year-old daughter back to Ireland has been launched. Officials from the country’s Department of Foreign Affairs have reportedly been deployed to Turkey’s border region to retrieve the 38-year-old, who travelled to Syria three years ago to join the Islamic State. Members of the Irish military […]
AN operation to bring ISIS bride Lisa Smith and her two-year-old daughter back to Ireland has been launched.
Officials from the country’s Department of Foreign Affairs have reportedly been deployed to Turkey’s border region to retrieve the 38-year-old, who travelled to Syria three years ago to join the Islamic State.
Members of the Irish military and its special operations force, the Army Ranger Wing, are understood to be assisting with the operation.
Smith is herself a former private in the military and member of the Irish Air Corps, but quit the forces in 2011 following her conversion to Islam.
She is thought to have left her home in Dundalk, Co Louth for Syria in 2015.
She later married British jihadi Sajid Aslam, by whom she had daughter Rakeya, but who she says was later killed in fighting.
Despite her military training, she claims never to have fought for ISIS, though is suspected of helping to train younger women in combat.
Asked in July whether she would be a security threat were she to return to Ireland, Smith told the BBC: “If you ask me am I going to hurt anyone? No. Have I any intentions to do anything? No.”
Members of the Ranger Wing are now reported to have been sent to the war-torn region to repatriate both Smith and infant Rakeya.
If returned, Smith will be the first Irish person brought home after joining ISIS.
Both the Defence Forces and the Department of Foreign Affairs declined to confirm any details of the mission or even whether it was taking place.
In a statement, the Defence Forces said that, for reasons of operational security, it would not comment on the “movements or disposition of personnel”.
‘I’M NOT GOING TO KILL ANYONE’
Since Islamic State lost the last of its territory earlier this year, Smith has been held at the Kurdish-run al-Hawl displacement camp in northeastern Syria.
In the same BBC interview, conducted at the camp, she said: “I’m just interested in trying to bring my daughter up and get her educated.
“I don’t even think I’m radicalised, you know?
“All I know is I just came to an Islamic State and it failed.
“So, at the beginning I didn’t come to kill anyone and when I was there I didn’t kill anyone and when I go home I’m not going to kill anyone.
“I just think I’m the same, you know?”
She also refuted the testimony of a number of young women who claim she took part in military training.
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“Even if I wanted to fight, tried to fight, they [ISIS’s male leaders] wouldn’t let me.
“Bring these girls to my face and we all sit here and they can see my face and we can speak and we will see the truth.”
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