The wife of an “overbearing” Islamist State terrorist has received a suspended two-year three-month jail term for providing clothes and other items to help him fight in Syria.

Fatima Elomar pleaded guilty to soliciting goods with the intention of supporting Mohamed Elomar’s entry into Syria where he was engaged in hostile activities.

In the Downing Centre district court on Friday, Judge Penelope Hock said the offending was at the lower end of seriousness and that Elomar appeared to have rehabilitated herself.

Her defence had told a Sydney court she was not sending her husband items to make him a better fighter.

Rather it was in the context of making him more comfortable after he was shot overseas and of her personal view of her faith in accepting that he was head of the family, her barrister, Greg James QC, said on Friday.

James submitted that a full-time custodial sentence should not be imposed on the now-widow for her admitted offence of soliciting goods with the intention of supporting her husband’s entry into Syria where he was engaged in hostile activities.

But Lincoln Crowley, for the crown, told the court that while the clothing, toiletries and other goods were “largely innocuous” they had to be considered within a context.

Although they weren’t guns or ammunition, the items would assist her husband to go into Syria, as a foreign fighter and member of a terrorist organisation, to engage in a religious conflict.

“This is not a case of simply providing some comfort items,” he said. “They are the type of items soldiers would receive to enable them to do their job.”

He submitted the judge would find that a sentence of imprisonment was the only option, particularly referring to the need for general deterrence.

But James referred to the “exceptional circumstances” of Elomar having four children, a dead husband and the fact that his family had “effectively abandoned her”.

Judge Penelope Hock handed Elomar a suspended sentence of two years and three months’ jail.

Elomar was stopped at Sydney airport on 3 May 2014, as she tried to board an international flight.

James told the judge Elomar would have travelled to Syria if her husband had maintained their marriage and asked her to accompany him.

“We accept that she was concerned to maintain her marriage and, on her view of her faith, to accept the direction of her husband, the head of the family.”

Mohamed Elomar and his friend Khaled Sharrouf gained notoriety in 2014 when they posed for photos holding the severed heads of enemy fighters.

Months before, there was a flurry of texts and images sent between Elomar and his wife throughout 2014 using the message service Tango.

In them he asks her to bring various items, including anti-dandruff shampoo, Adidas pants and underwear, solar watches and long-sleeved T-shirts without buttons when she joins him in Syria.