Teenager was urged to attack British Museum by Isis 'husband', court told

A teenager accused of plotting a terrorist attack on the British Museum has said her Islamic State partner encouraged her to launch an attack in the UK three times.

Safaa Boular, 18, allegedly discussed a grenade and gun attack on the museum in central London with Isis fighter Naweed Hussain in Syria.

When Boular was locked up on charges of attempting to travel to Isis-controlled territory, she allegedly passed on the plot to her older sister, Rizlaine Boular, 22.

On Wednesday, jurors at the Old Bailey heard how Safaa Boular, at the age of 16, met Hussain and went on to have what she regarded as an online Islamic marriage in 2016. When she was stopped by police from joining him in Syria, Hussain urged her to drop out of school and launch an attack in Britain instead.

“Around November [2016] he proposed to me about an attack at Christmas,” Boular told the court. “He asked me if I was scared of being in an attack and I told him yes I am. Then he went back to the same usual lovey-dovey topics.”

She said after Hussain realised the pair would never meet he proposed an attack in the UK and “said even if I need a car or a knife that’s what I should do”.

When Boular rebuffed the idea, she told the court he “just went back to the same conversation we had before, romantic, sweet”.

Joel Bennathan QC, defending, asked if Hussain ever said why Boular should carry out an attack. “He told me if he died first I would not be able to cope with the news of his death so it would be better if I died first. But when I told him I was scared he just dropped the topic,” she replied.

She said Hussain raised the prospect again in early 2017, suggesting she could carry out an attack on Valentine’s Day.

“Again I refused. I assumed it was the usual stuff he talked about before, like car or knife attacks,” she said, adding that she did not even drive.

In messages after her birthday in March, Hussain mentioned an attack for the third time. He talked about “tokarev” and “pineapples” – guns and grenades – in relation to a proposed British Museum attack, the court heard.

But Boular insisted she never agreed to it, and had no idea it was even possible to get guns and grenades in Britain.

The teenagers chatted to Hussain, who was in his 30s, via encrypted Telegram messages on a secret mobile phone she bought at Brixton Market. She would communicate with him in her school sixth-form lounge and at home in her bedroom and bathroom, she said.

“Naweed asked me to send pictures of my body, which I did. Initially I did not want to because I am a shy person but as my husband I did not think there was any problem being intimate with him,” she said.

Hussain also sent her explicit photographs of himself and told Boular to watch “X-rated material”, she said.

The court heard how Hussain, from Coventry, attempted to woo a Sun page-three model, and fell for a newspaper sting. “He told me he was in the news. He said these conversations took place before he met me,” Boular said of the incident.

After Hussain was killed in Syria, Boular allegedly plotted to carry out the attack and join him in martyrdom.

In April last year, after she was charged and detained for planning to travel to Isis territory for terrorism, she is alleged to have passed the baton to her sister.

The sisters are accused of discussing the attack in a coded conversation – played to the court – about an Alice In Wonderland-themed Mad Hatter’s tea party.

Boular denied this, saying she suggested Alice In Wonderland as a party theme because she had seen a movie and because it was “typical English”. She said talk of cucumber sandwiches and cakes were not code words.

Rizlaine Boular, of Clerkenwell in central London, has admitted planning a knife attack in London and her mother, Mina Dich, 44, has pleaded guilty to assisting her.

Safaa Boular, who lived at home with her mother in Vauxhall, south-west London, has denied two counts of preparing acts of terrorism.

The trial continues.