ISIS terrorists win court battle over UK jail terms

Judges rule against attempt to increase unduly lenient sentences for pair jailed over separate terrorism plots

Safiyya Shaikh, 37, of west London was sentenced to life in jail for a plot to carry out a terrorist attack on the city's St Paul’s Cathedral. Metropolitan Police

Two committed ISIS followers jailed for life for plotting terrorist attacks will not serve longer prison terms after judges rejected a claim that they were too lenient.

The British government’s senior legal adviser had appealed against the jail sentences over unconnected plots for a would-be suicide bomber and a terrorist who incited a German ISIS cell to launch a mass casualty attack.

Three judges ruled that Safiyya Shaikh, a Muslim convert, and Fatah Abdullah would continue to serve minimum sentences of 14 and nine years respectively after they were imprisoned last summer. Lawyers for the Attorney General’s Office had argued for minimum sentences of 18 and 12 years.

Shaikh plotted to blow up St Paul’s Cathedral in central London while harbouring ambitions to become the UK’s first homegrown female suicide bomber.

She told police that she wanted to carry out a suicide bombing like the 2019 Easter Sunday terrorist attack in Sri Lanka that killed more than 250 people.

She was caught after she unwittingly confided her plans to an undercover police officer, whom she believed to be an extremist and bomb-making expert.

Iranian refugee Fatah Abdullah, who was granted asylum in the UK in 2005, bought explosives and used the encrypted messenger app Telegram to incite two Iranians in Germany to carry out a terrorist attack.

Abdullah researched how to make a pressure-cooker bomb and encouraged the plotters to drive a car into a crowd, attack people with a meat cleaver and trigger an explosion.

The plot was disrupted and a German court concluded in 2019 that the two men in Germany, Omar Babek and Ahmed Hussein, lacked the financial means to carry out an attack.

The UK government is planning a new law that will introduce a mandatory minimum jail sentence of 14 years for the most serious terrorist offences.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson acted after a series of attacks by prisoners released early from terrorist-related sentences.