Rizlaine Boular sentenced to life as her mother, Mina Dich, gets six years and nine months

Members of Britain’s first all-female terror cell, including a mother and daughter, have been jailed for planning a knife attack on members of the public outside the Palace of Westminster in London.

Rizlaine Boular, 22, was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum term of 16 years, after she pleaded guilty earlier this year to engaging in acts in preparation for terrorism. Her mother, Mina Dich, 44, was sentenced to six years and nine months, plus five years on extended licence, after pleading guilty to assisting Boular.



Their friend Khawla Barghouthi, 21, pleaded guilty to failing to disclose information about an attack and will be sentenced next week.



The plot was foiled by counter-terrorism police and MI5 agents, who bugged the family home, recorded phone conversations and posed online as Islamic State operatives.



The prosecution said Boular “planned to launch an attack, using knives, against members of the public, selected largely at random, in the environs of the Palace of Westminster in central London. This would have been an attack that would at the very least have caused widespread panic, but was intended to involve the infliction of serious injury and death.



“Mina Dich provided positive assistance and support to her daughter Rizlaine Boular, in the knowledge that she would commit an attack using knives (albeit that she did not understand that the attack would involve fatality or injury).



“Khawla Barghouthi, aware ... of Rizlaine Boular’s desire to undertake an attack in general terms, then became aware of Rizlaine Boular’s plans to commit an act of terrorism at a later stage and failed to disclose any of that information to the authorities.”

Lawyers for mother-of-one Boular said a “very troubled upbringing” had affected her mental state at the time of the offence.

They alleged that she was groomed to attempt to travel to Syria in 2014. On her return, what she needed was “a little tender love and care” and a credible alternative voice to that of Isis, but what she actually got was a husband twice her age who abused her vulnerabilities. “Rather than finding a saviour, she ended up in the hands of a monster,” said Imran Khan QC.

Khan said Boular wanted to die and knew that as soon as she used a knife outside Westminster, she would be shot and killed.

Lawyers for Dich said she never believed her daughter would use a knife to cause injury. They said she simply accompanied Boular to the supermarket and was not privy to all the details of the plan – “a telltale sign of an individual playing a lesser role”.

Lawyers for Barghouthi said there was a contradiction between the period of time when her conversations with Boular took place and her previous life. They said her initial meetings with Boular were “totally normal social interactions” and the later recorded conversations were “stupid fooling around”, according to Barghouthi.

But the judge spoke of the extent of Boular’s radicalisation and the depth of her commitment to the Isis cause and violent jihad. “It was a wicked act which you planned to carry out,” he told her.



Of Dich, the judge said assisting her daughter to carry out an act of terrorism with the belief Boular would brandish a knife and threaten members of the public was enough to deem her a danger. He said she had shown signs of radicalisation and “played a significant role in her daughters’ radicalisation”, which resulted in them plotting terrorism “in the city they were born in and lived”.

The court was told about a recorded phone conversation in which Boular discussed an attack with her 18-year-old sister, Safaa Boular. They spoke in coded terms, referring to an Alice in Wonderland-themed party.

Around the same time, Boular and her mother visited various landmarks in London in what was believed to be a reconnaissance of potential targets. They went to a supermarket on Wandsworth Road in south London and bought a packet of kitchen knives and a rucksack.

A day later, Boular was recorded discussing the planned knife attack and practising at Barghouthi’s home. That evening, during an armed police raid, Boular was shot and taken to hospital; she recovered fully. Dich was arrested separately.

Safaa Boular, the fourth member of the cell, was one of the youngest females to be charged and convicted of plotting a terror act in the UK, and will be sentenced at a later date.



She was accused of discussing a gun and grenade attack on the British Museum with her Isis militant partner, Naweed Hussain, and of attempting to travel to Syria for terrorism. When she was detained, she allegedly passed the plot on to her sister.



Safaa Boular lived with her mother in Vauxhall, south-west London, and her sister lived in Willesden, north-west London.



Rizlaine Boular first tried to travel to Syria in October 2014, but was stopped in Turkey after her family reported her missing. Upon her return to the UK she married and had a child. According to police, she said it was the subsequent breakdown of this marriage and her interest in world affairs that turned her thoughts back to Syria.

In August 2016, Safaa Boular returned from a holiday in Morocco with her mother. She was stopped and interviewed by police at London Stansted airport, where she gave an account of her intention to travel to Syria and suggested Rizlaine Boular had been involved in the planning.



Subsequent analysis of mobile phones taken from Safaa Boular revealed evidence of conversations between her and Hussain, who sent money to Rizlaine Boular to fund the sisters’ journey to Syria.



Duncan Atkinson QC, prosecuting, spoke of the sisters’ close ties. “Each was committed to making an active contribution to the Isis cause, each initially seeking to make that contribution in Syria before circumstances led them to set their sights instead on a target in the UK.



“The prosecution case, more particularly, is that Rizlaine Boular’s plan to engage in acts of terrorism in the UK was promoted by the arrest of her sister, which prevented Safaa from engaging in such acts herself – an intention of which Rizlaine was aware and which she supported.”



A probe device operating at the home of Dich and Safaa Boular recorded conversations about terrorism planning and the rationale or justification for such actions.



During the period in which Safaa Boular is alleged to have been engaged in attack planning, probe evidence of a conversation between the sisters recorded Rizlaine Boular as saying: “The bus goes past the British Museum and I thought of you.”

