Lisa Smith sentenced to 15 months in jail for joining ISIS

Lisa Smith, a former Irish soldier who travelled to Syria to join Isis in 2014, has been jailed for 15 months by the Special Criminal Court.

Mr Justice Tony Hunt did not suspend any portion of the sentence and noted that while Smith is at a low risk for reoffending she was persistent and determined in her efforts to travel to Syria and join Isis and has shown no remorse for her actions.

Smith's lawyers have asked the court to permit Ms Smith to be released on bail pending an appeal.

Smith was convicted by the three-judge, non-jury court of membership of Isis following a trial earlier this year. She accepted that she travelled to Isis-controlled Syria in 2014 but denied that she had ever joined Isis or any other group.

She said she believed she had a religious obligation to live inside the Islamic State created by terrorist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Mr Justice Tony Hunt, delivering the court's verdict, said that she went to Syria with her "eyes wide open" having watched videos of Isis atrocities and having taken part in discussions about Isis with jihadis from Germany, Australia, America and parts of the Middle East.

He said that her journey to Syria was in itself an act of allegiance and pointed to evidence that she swore an oath of allegiance to al-Baghdadi and that she urged her former husband to do the same and divorced him when he refused.

She was the first person to be convicted in an Irish court of an Islamic terrorist offence committed abroad.

Smith (40) from Dundalk, Co Louth had pleaded not guilty to membership of an unlawful terrorist group, Islamic State, between October 28th, 2015 and December 1st, 2019.