Shadi Jabar, who fled Sydney a day before her brother shot Curtis Cheng, helped plan attacks on west and urged women to go to Syria

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The Sydney woman whose teenage brother shot dead police accountant Curtis Cheng reportedly became a high-level recruiter for Islamic State in Syria before she was killed in a US airstrike.

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Former Parramatta resident Shadi Jabar, 27, helped plan attacks on the west and used the encrypted messaging application Telegram to urge fighters and women to go to Syria, according to News Corp.

She fled Sydney on 1 October 2015. The next day, her 15-year-old brother Farhad Jabar shot Cheng dead outside Parramatta police headquarters before he was shot dead by police.

Shadi Jabar and her husband, Sudanese fighter Abu Saad al-Sudani, were killed in a US airstrike on the Syrian city of Al-Bab on 22 April, according to the US government.

According to a Pentagon spokesman, Jabar and Al-Sudani were “active in recruiting foreign fighters in efforts to inspire attacks against western interests”.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said Al-Sudani was actively involved in helping plan attacks on targets in Canada, the United States and the UK. “There was an effort specifically to target western interests and we took this strike because we believe that this was in America’s national security interest and that they did pose a threat to the US,” Cook said.

Using the name Umm Isa al Amrikiah, Shadi Jabar posted messages spreading Isis ideology and criticising men who didn’t join the fight and appeared to have risen to senior ranks in Isis’s propaganda wing.

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Her account contained pictures from Syria, including one of a pistol and what she said was a suicide belt along with the words “May Allah ... grant me the opportunity to use it soon”.

Australian federal police assistant commissioner Neil Gaughan said about 15 Australian women are believed to be in Syria, including five who went there from Melbourne to become jihadi brides in the last nine to 12 months.

Most of the women were between 19 and 25, and Gaughan warned Syria was not the glamorous destination it was portrayed as on social media.