Advertisement

St Paul's bomb-plotter Safiyya Amira Shaikh given life sentence

A Muslim convert and supporter of Islamic State, who plotted to bomb St Paul’s Cathedral at Easter, has been sentenced to life in prison.

Safiyya Amira Shaikh, 37, from Hayes, west London, admitted preparing terrorist acts and disseminating terrorist publications that encouraged others to launch similar attacks. She had been under police and MI5 surveillance.

During the sentencing on Friday, Shaikh sat in the dock wearing a black hijab with her head bowed, but as she was sent down she gave a single-finger Isis salute to journalists present in the courtroom. Shaikh will have to serve a minimum term of 14 years before being considered for release by the parole board.

The court heard that Sheikh had discussed online, with co-conspirators who she later discovered were undercover officers, plans to target a nearby hotel in the City of London and her desire to blow herself up afterwards on the underground.

Although in mitigation it was argued that she had got “cold feet” about going through with the plot because she did not want to disappoint the co-conspirators, that position was undermined by a phone call she made from prison that was intercepted.

The transcript of the call was read out in court. During the call she told a friend she had wanted to “go through with it” and had only been delayed because she was “doing drugs”.

Earlier, her defence counsel, Ben Newton, said: “This particular terrorist act would never have actually happened. Three people were involved in this plot, and the other two were undercover police officers.

“There was no bomb, and there never would be. She didn’t want to blow up a church of people, she just wanted friends,” Newton said.

Court artist sketch of Safiyya Amira Shaikh.
Court artist’s sketch of Safiyya Amira Shaikh. Photograph: Elizabeth Cook/PA

Shaikh, who was born Michelle Ramsden, had converted to Islam in 2007 after being impressed by the kindness of a local Muslim family. She became increasingly disillusioned by what she saw as the mosques’ moderate version of Islam.

She had visited St Paul’s in central London to scout out security precautions and the best place to leave a bomb. She initially intended to carry out the attack at Christmas but later put it back to Easter.

Delivering sentence, the judge, Mr Justice Sweeney, acknowledged that Shaikh had suffered from mental health issues, but said: “There are a number of aggravating factors – communication with known extremists, deliberate use of encrypted communications, use of multiple social media platforms, significant volumes of terrorist publications published and attempting to disguise your identity.”

Shaikh’s defence team said she had “doubts” over the plot but the court heard that moments before the judge was due to sentence her a day earlier – on Thursday – prosecutors disclosed details of a phone call to a friend from prison last week, in which Shaikh said: “I didn’t get cold feet, yeah – I was ready to go through with it.”

Sweeney added: “I had already reached the sure conclusion in the original evidence that your claim of doubt to the police and others was a lie. Your intention had been – and remained throughout – strong.”

During the sentencing hearing last month, Alison Morgan QC, prosecuting, said Shaikh was a “violent extremist” who had pledged her support to Isis. She was not just planning an attack but also “encouraging others to commit attacks of a similar kind”.

Shaikh’s online propaganda postings were sophisticated and “prolific”, the court was told, including pictures of executions, glorification of atrocities and spreading threats to carry out mass murder.

Shaikh had no previous terror-related convictions but was on the radar of counter-terrorism investigators from at least 2016. She was referred to the Prevent deradicalisation programme three times between 2016 and 2018 but each time she disengaged. She was never referred to the counter-extremism scheme Channel.

On the encrypted message service Telegram, Shaikh ran a social media channel called GreenB1rds, which spread pro-Isis propaganda and called for attacks in the UK and overseas specifically on churches.

Sometimes she posed as a man online, believing it would encourage more people to engage with her. Detectives had evidence that she was so fixated on her own martyrdom that she was lining up others to take over her Telegram account.

During the investigation, she told undercover officers – posing as husband and wife extremists – about her plan to blow up St Paul’s. After her reconnaissance mission, she sent pictures to one of the undercover officers of the cathedral’s dome from inside, writing: “I would like to do this place for sure. I would like to bomb and shoot ‘til death … I really would love to destroy that place and the kafir [a derogatory Arabic term for infidel or unbeliever] there.”

Shaikh told the officers she wanted to carry out the attacks at Christmas or Easter when the churches would be busier. She was thought to have been inspired by the Sri Lanka bombings that killed 269 people during Easter in April 2019.

She believed the undercover officers would be able to help her obtain explosives. She met the second undercover officer to hand over a pink Nike-branded holdall and a backpack, believing these would be converted into explosive devices.

On 18 August 2019, she was stopped at Luton airport and prevented from flying to to Amsterdam. Her ticket had been purchased by Yousra Lemouesset, a Netherlands-based Isis supporter who has since been convicted of terror offences.

St Paul’s Cathedral in London
Safiyya Amira Shaikh visited St Paul’s Cathedral to scout out security precautions and the best place to leave a bomb. Photograph: Victoria Jones/PA

Shaikh later met an undercover officer, who was posing as the wife of her co-conspirator, to be measured up for a suicide vest. She told the officer, the court heard, “about the route to her beliefs, said that moderate Muslims are not true, only those who fight. She gave her measurements, including her bra size.”

In one exchange she told the undercover officers: “Killing one kafir [non-believer] is not enough for me.” In another, she admitted that watching beheading videos was difficult at first “but now I love”. Among the images she posted shortly afterwards was one with the message in bloody letters: “Pigs you will soon pay for your crimes”. In later messages, she said that if approached by the police at her home she would detonate a device to kill them and herself.

Shaikh appeared to pay no regard to her family and daughter, Morgan told the court. “The references to her family seem to be [of them being] an inconvenience.”

Shaikh had been in contact with Anjem Choudary, a convicted British jihadist, and had listened to the recorded online lectures of the Yemeni militant Anwar Al-Awlaki who was killed by a US drone strike.

She was eventually arrested on 10 October last year when she cancelled a meeting with undercover officers. In police interviews, she attempted to diminish her role although she admitted to a previous drug addiction and said she wanted to go to heaven.