Safaa Boular, 18, is one of the youngest women convicted of terrorism offences in the UK

An 18-year-old who became one of the youngest women to be convicted of terrorism offences in the UK has been sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 13 years.

A jury found that Safaa Boular plotted with her partner, Naweed Hussain, an Islamic State militant, to launch a grenade and bomb attack on the British Museum in Bloomsbury, central London. She was also found guilty of attempting to travel to Syria to join Isis.

Boular was the final member of her terror cell to be sentenced at the Old Bailey, after the convictions of her mother, Mina Dich, 44, her older sister, Rizlaine Boular, 22, and the family friend Khawla Barghouthi, 21.

Judge Mark Dennis QC rejected claims she had entirely renounced her Islamist views and downplayed the extent grooming played in her radicalisation.

“In my view there’s insufficient evidence to say at this stage this defendant is a truly transformed individual. Her views were deeply entrenched. However much she may have been influenced and drawn into extremism, it appeared she knew what she was doing and acted with open eyes,” he told the court.

Boular met Hussain, from Coventry, who was 30 and a known Isis recruiter, online when she was 16, the court heard. They were in contact for three months before they declared their love for each other and had what she regarded as an online Islamic marriage.



Duncan Atkinson QC, prosecuting, told jurors Boular wanted to marry Hussain and to carry out a suicide attack in Syria. After police prevented her from joining him in the country, messages on her phone revealed repeated conversations about a potential attack in the UK.

Boular claimed she never agreed to any attack. Her defence lawyer, Joel Bennathan QC, said she was a child when Hussain groomed her. “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.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Court artist sketch of (from left) Mina Dich, Rizlaine Boular and Khawla Barghouthi. Photograph: Elizabeth Cook/PA

Jurors heard how the couple shared their enthusiasm for TV gameshows such as Deal or No Deal but also fantasised about killing Barack Obama and exchanged extremist material.

They discussed plans for attacks in the UK several times. In messages after her birthday in March, Hussain mentioned an attack for a third time. He talked about “Tokarev” and “pineapples” – meaning guns and grenades – in relation to a proposed attack on the British Museum, the court heard.

After Hussain was killed in Syria, Boular told undercover MI5 officers she planned to carry out his plans for an attack in the UK and join him in martyrdom.

Rizlaine was shot when armed police moved in to arrest the gang on 27 April last year but made a full recovery. She was jailed for life with a minimum term of 16 years, having admitted preparing acts of terrorism.

Dich, from Vauxhall, south London, was jailed for six years and nine months, with an additional five years on licence, for helping Rizlaine Boular. Barghouthi, who pleaded guilty to failing to alert authorities, was jailed for two years and four months.