Lisa Smith, 37-year-old Irish soldier-turned Daesh* bride, was escorted on Tuesday from Limerick prison to join her family, including her Syrian-born little daughter, in Dublin. The latter acquired Irish citizenship by birth, despite her mother reportedly moving to the Daesh battlefield in 2016.
Picture on the left looks like where it all started, Lisa Smith going into day 4 of the session absolutely whacked, one of the girls says “will we do something mad”. The girls go skinny dipping and Lisa joins ISIS pic.twitter.com/CkklkdbRuu
— GleNN (@glennmc67) January 1, 2020
The former soldier had earlier been slapped with terrorism charges after being arrested in November at Dublin Airport en route from Turkey, and spent some time in prison before walking out of it on bail on New Year’s Eve.
After the detention, the woman was charged with membership in an illegal organisation "styling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant", and is now to appear before a Dublin district court on 8 January. Smith denies all the charges.
The woman, along with her child, are understood to have been held in a Syrian camp since February 2019 after fleeing the last Daesh stronghold in Baghouz.
It was bombed, and the woman was captured by Turkish forces during their campaign across Syria’s northeast. Officials from the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs were reportedly dispatched to take Smith back so she could appear before court, with members of the Irish military and Army Ranger Wing, its special operations department, assisting in the mission.
Smith’s bail conditions require the Irish woman to stay at a particular address and sign in at a police station twice a day without going out-of-doors at night.
From November until the end of December, when Smith was freed on bail, the rest of the family took care of her little daughter.
Among the most notorious Daesh wives that found themselves first on the battlefield in Syria and then in prison camps following Turkey’s involvement, is Shamima Begum, who with two other girls travelled to Syria in 2015, and then reiterated her intention to get back to the UK.
She was deprived of British citizenship after dropping scores of controversial remarks about her life in Daesh-controlled areas. More specifically, she claimed in a 2019 interview with The Times that she didn’t regret joining Daesh, as well as felt okay about Daesh prisoners being beheaded.
*Daesh, also known as ISIS/IS/Islamic State, is a terrorist group banned in Russia and many other countries.
