Give me a crash course in... the Lisa Smith trial

Who is Lisa Smith?

Lisa Smith, aged 40, grew up in Dundalk, Co Louth. She was 19 when she joined the Defence Forces in 2001, and converted to Islam in 2010 when a long-term relationship was breaking down. She left the army in 2011 after being refused permission to wear the hijab, the veil worn by Muslim women to cover their hair. In 2015 she went to Syria after the terrorist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi called on Muslims to travel to the Islamic State. She previously travelled to Syria in 2013 but told gardaí she was laughed at when she asked militia fighters what she could do to help and was told to get in the kitchen.

When she decided to return to Syria in 2015, she said she knew she would not have any role other than as a housewife. During that second trip, she met and married an English man after divorcing her Tunisian husband. They had a daughter, born in Raqqa in August 2017, and the family later fled across Syria, staying in various places for periods as the forces supporting Syrian president Bashar al-Assad gained ground. Smith’s husband was killed and she and her daughter spent time in refugee camps until she was eventually deported back to Ireland in December 2019.

Why is she in the news?

She was found guilty this week — after a nine-week trial before the non-jury Special Criminal Court — of membership of the unlawful Islamic State terrorist organisation, Isis, between October 28th, 2015, and December 1st, 2019. Smith is the first person in the State to be convicted of membership of Isis. She was acquitted on a second charge of financing terrorism via a payment of €800 made by her to a named man whom the prosecution alleged was an injured Isis fighter.

What did the court say?

Mr Justice Tony Hunt said the decision to convict on the charge of membership was based primarily on Smith’s travel to Syria in October 2015. It was no defence for a person to say they committed a crime because of a religious belief, “even if sincerely held”. Smith had viewed propaganda videos showing extreme acts of violence and was “particularly well informed” about the organisation that ruled where she had decided to live, he said. There was “no room for pleas or naivety or ignorance” by October 2015 and “her eyes were wide open”.

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[ Full story of the Lisa Smith trial: How did a former Irish soldier end up a member of Isis? ]

Why did it acquit on the charge of financing terrorism?

The court said it could not exclude a reasonable possibility that Smith was motivated primarily by charitable or humanitarian considerations when she sent the €800 to the injured man via Western Union money transfer in May 2015. There was “sufficient ambiguity” about her intention to establish reasonable doubt, it held.

What was Smith’s explanation for going to Syria in 2015?

In interviews with gardaí, Smith said she had not wanted to return to Syria but believed her religion required her to support the Muslims in Syria and to make “hijrah” — travel to live inside the Islamic caliphate announced by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. She repeatedly said her religious obligation, not any desire to join a terrorist organisation, prompted her to go. When previously asked by RTÉ News, while she was still in a Syrian refugee camp, whether it was worth giving up everything in Ireland “for an ideology”, she replied: “No, it wasn’t worth it.”

What happens now?

Smith has been released on bail prior to a sentencing hearing on July 11th. She has the option of appealing her conviction.