Fardosa Abdullahi Update. “Fiancee of July 21 suicide attack plotter jailed for helping him to escape in a burka,” by Duncan Gardham for the Telegraph, July 12:
The fiancée of one of the leaders of the failed July 21 suicide attacks has been sentenced to three years in jail for helping him escape by dressing in a burka as a Muslim woman.
Fardosa Abdullahi, who was 17 at the time, gave Yassin Omar her mobile phone handset, provided a scarf and handbag for his disguise and accompanied him to Golders Green coach station where he fled to Birmingham in his feminine disguise.
Omar’s family persuaded her to contact police but she claimed she did not know where he was and it was not until six days after the bombings that police caught up with the bomber when they raided a house in Birmingham where he was found standing in a bath with a rucksack on his back.
But Abdullahi, who had just left school in 2005, claimed she was pressurised by Omar and her family into the engagement, four days before the attacks, and into helping him escape.
Sentencing her to three years in jail, Judge Paul Worsley QC, said: “Your responsibility to this country should have been greater than your responsibility to your fiancée or husband.
“The message must go out that this court will not go soft on those who assist terrorists even those who are young, vulnerable and under pressure.”
The court heard that Abdullahi, who is 24 weeks pregnant, suffered from severe post traumatic stress disorder after a serious assault when she was six in Somalia and had suffered from “on-going difficulties within her family and a further traumatic event at the age of 12” which led to treatment at the Royal Free Hospital in North London.
Medical reports from five different doctors concluded that she heard the “psuedo hallucinatory” voice of her attacker and that that voice had changed to Yassin Omar’s voice after her engagement.
Judge Worsley said there was no evidence that Abdullahi was a suicide risk and added: “I can reduce the prison sentence due to circumstances but prison it must be to reinforce the fact that anyone who assists those who are set to kill and maim on a scale not to be contemplated must receive punishment.”…