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UK: Refugee from Iraq jailed for “Twitter terrorism”

Jun 11, 2015 9:40 am By Robert Spencer

Alaa Esayed“Esayed was brought up in Mosul, Iraq, and came to Britain with her family in 2007 after her father, who worked for the military, was forced to flee the country.”

“The material you were disseminating encouraged young men to go and fight and you now accept that was your intention and, furthermore, to encourage women to go to support them and indeed to bring up their children in the belief that it is their duty to take up arms to wage violent jihad and embrace martyrdom. And furthermore to encourage mothers to be proud of their sons who die as martyrs.”

No doubt no one gave a thought to questioning her or her father about their beliefs when they came to Britain in 2007. That would have been “Islamophobic.”

“Woman jailed for ‘Twitter terrorism,'” Guardian, June 11, 2015:

A young woman who admitted being a “Twitter terrorist” on a massive scale has been jailed for three and a half years.

Alaa Esayed, 22, posted more than 45,000 tweets in Arabic on an open account to her 8,240 followers between June 2013 and May 2014, with many encouraging violent jihad.

Her account, which bore a profile of a woman in a burka with one finger raised and holding a kalashnikov, even came to the attention of al-Qaida, which listed it as among the 66 most important jihadi accounts.

Esayed, from Kennington, south London, was sentenced at the Old Bailey on Thursday after pleading guilty to encouraging terrorism and disseminating a terrorist publication.

The judge Charles Wide told her: “This material and its dissemination is an important factor in the encouragement of young men and women to travel abroad and engage in acts of terrorism.

“It is a matter of great and justified public concern. You were disseminating such material on a massive scale over a period of just short of a year. An indication of how busy you were in this activity is that on a site associated with al-Qaida your Twitter account was noted to be one of 66 important jihadi accounts.”

The judge added: “The material you were disseminating encouraged young men to go and fight and you now accept that was your intention and, furthermore, to encourage women to go to support them and indeed to bring up their children in the belief that it is their duty to take up arms to wage violent jihad and embrace martyrdom.

“And furthermore to encourage mothers to be proud of their sons who die as martyrs.”

He said the material, which was also posted on Instagram, included graphic images of corpses and prisoners about to be beheaded. Wide said it was a feature of the case that Esayed continually changed her story after she was arrested until her guilty plea in April.

He told her she knew “perfectly well” what she had been doing, despite initially claiming she only wanted to learn about Muslim struggles in Iraq, Syria and Palestine and was merely cutting and pasting from other sources with her limited understanding of written Arabic….

Esayed was brought up in Mosul, Iraq, and came to Britain with her family in 2007 after her father, who worked for the military, was forced to flee the country.

Most of Esayed’s posts were cut and pasted from other sources and she insisted she did not support violent jihad. She had no intention of being a martyr and she could not even read or write Arabic well, a statement to police after her arrest said.

Her lawyer, Tanveer Qureshi, said in mitigation: “Yes, she is a Twitter terrorist, but she is a Twitter terrorist who lacked creativity. She did not have a blog. She was blindly cutting and pasting.” He said her postings were just propaganda and there was no practical advice to any budding terrorists.

Esayed was supported in court by her father. Wide noted that she came from a “close-knit and concerned family”, adding: “It is moving to see your father here – he must be very upset by what you have done and the position you find yourself [in].”

Yes, he must be!

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Filed Under: Al-Qaeda, Featured, immigration, Internet jihad, Iraq, United Kingdom Tagged With: Alaa Esayed, Twitter


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Comments

  1. Angemon says

    Jun 11, 2015 at 10:42 am

    Her lawyer, Tanveer Qureshi, said in mitigation: “Yes, she is a Twitter terrorist, but she is a Twitter terrorist who lacked creativity. She did not have a blog. She was blindly cutting and pasting.”

    And most suicide bombers don’t build their own bombs. They still get people killed.

    In all fairness, when I read the UK had arrested someone for “Twiter Terrorism” I expected it to be a “right wing” activist posting “islamophobic” stuff, like pointing out truths about islam. I’m pleasantly surprised.

    • Lia Wissing says

      Jun 12, 2015 at 7:36 am

      Good for the judge!

      • Godwin says

        Jun 12, 2015 at 9:59 am

        No, she should be deported to Iraq after serving her sentence.

        • Caroline says

          Jun 12, 2015 at 2:12 pm

          The devil makes work for idle hands. These mozz parasites don’t have to work, we support them with benefits. She had a lot of time on her hands to send 45,000 tweets. They have all the time in the world to hatch their plots against us.

  2. RonaldB says

    Jun 11, 2015 at 10:55 am

    This is a perfect illustration of why western countries should not be involved militarily in any of the Muslim wars, unless the security of a country is directly threatened. By directly, I mean the borders are actually under attack.

    What happens is that the West allies itself with one or the other side, which is not all that different from the side they are fighting. When our side goes south, we feel honor-bound to accept our allies as refugees, since they will be tortured and killed by the victors.

    But, once they are in the country, their jihad is pretty much the jihad of the other side.

    Our safest bet is to stay out of the wars altogether. Most of the threat of ISIS is its influence on people already inside our borders. I’m not saying ISIS is benign, but we’re better off letting the people in the region sort it out. Most likely, if the US hadn’t intervened, ISIS would not have such a large land mass.

    • Rob says

      Jun 11, 2015 at 4:02 pm

      The alternative is to make any residency or citizenship given to these refugees “conditional”..
      They retain their original citizenship as a condition of their US status on the understanding that the US status can be revoked and the individual deported for offenses like this one.
      Only by quantifying the risk will these people think twice before putting their privileged US existence at risk.
      Once they see a few of the fellow expats bundled off to the airport on one way tickets, they may think again.

  3. Jovial Joe says

    Jun 11, 2015 at 11:08 am

    Also in the Guardian an interesting piece on the rise of ISIS. It seems surreal that an author should map its rise in a style that eschews moral value judgments but it’s an interesting piece all the same:

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/10/how-isis-crippled-al-qaida

  4. Charli Main says

    Jun 11, 2015 at 11:40 am

    Is this piece of Muslim shit going to be deported back to the Muslim shit hole she came from ????
    Of course not–that would be racist, bigoted, zenophobic, Islamphobic and a violation of her ” human rights”. After all, she is just a Muslim practicing Islam 101- BITE THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU AND GIVES YOU SANTUARY.

  5. Caroline says

    Jun 11, 2015 at 12:40 pm

    These people really are wired differently, aren’t they? There is no thanks or gratitude, they just want to bring death and destruction. They add no value to whichever society is unfortunate to host them.

    • PRCS says

      Jun 11, 2015 at 1:42 pm

      Lifelong Muslims are wired differently due to their lifelong Islamic indoctrination.

      Although not as a result of religious fanaticism, North Koreans are wired differently, too.

      Every “radicalized” Muslim was a less devout Muslim at one time. Young Muslims are not literalists–yet; they’re being ever more aggressively informed with each passing year by their parents and “trusted imams”.

      As usual–unless it’s just not stated in the article–why hasn’t the woman stated why she PERSONALLY became a “twitter terrorist”? When will the public be told–unequivocally–the truth about Islam from a really devout Muslim’s perspective.

      How long is the public expected to endure phrases like “twitter terrorist” instead of the honest definition: jihadist?

  6. Papa Whiskey says

    Jun 11, 2015 at 1:39 pm

    The possibility that this ginch’s father was not in on this should not be excluded. ISIS recruits seem to be almost exclusively in their teens or early twenties — in other words, overgrown juvenile delinquents.

    • PRCS says

      Jun 11, 2015 at 1:53 pm

      To what does the judge’s base his suggestion that her father “must be very upset by what you have done and the position you find yourself [in]””

      To your point, yow shocked would he be to learn that her father might only be upset that she was caught?

  7. Mirren10 says

    Jun 11, 2015 at 2:51 pm

    Why didn’t the judge also **underline** the fact that this cow was *given asyslum** in the UK, and this is how she repays it, and her father as well?

    • mortimer says

      Jun 11, 2015 at 3:13 pm

      Agree. They bite the hand that feeds them and actively conspire to destroy democracy. The naivety of Western authorities is BREATHTAKING!

      Radical Islamic Chic is rampant among Muslim youth.

  8. mortimer says

    Jun 11, 2015 at 3:08 pm

    The West demands that Muslims denounce JIHAD, but by denouncing JIHAD those Muslims leave Islam.

  9. Carlos Danger says

    Jun 11, 2015 at 4:12 pm

    After her sentence, revoke her citizenship and send her sorry arse back to Mosul.

    She can stick her finger and suck her kalashnikov.

  10. Jeff says

    Jun 11, 2015 at 6:34 pm

    One thousand lashes sounds about right for her crime.

  11. Ephesian says

    Jun 12, 2015 at 2:22 am

    …and no doubt whilst in prison she’ll be pandered to,her every islamic wish fulfilled,including internet usage,from which she can continue to swot up on her arabic..! My god,what has this country descended to,the country that our forefathers fought for,died for,and loved with every fibre of their being,true patriots.I don’t recognise this as my country anymore,I crave somewhere where I can go at least a whole day without bumping into some bin liner attired person(who knows if it’s male or female under all that?)and have to listen to that awful language.We need one man,just one man(or woman)with the balls to change this country around,for our children’s sake.

  12. Baucent says

    Jun 12, 2015 at 5:44 am

    After doing time she should be deported back to Iraq.

  13. steve o says

    Jun 12, 2015 at 12:30 pm

    F#@king deport her!!! sheesh!!

  14. gravenimage says

    Jun 12, 2015 at 9:49 pm

    UK: Refugee from Iraq jailed for “Twitter terrorism”

    “Esayed was brought up in Mosul, Iraq, and came to Britain with her family in 2007 after her father, who worked for the military, was forced to flee the country.”
    …………………………

    No doubt this meant that the UK assumed this meant the family was “moderate”. Either they were wrong about the whole lot of them, or the second generation became “radicalized”.

    In either case, this shows that Muslims cannot be trusted, and will bite the hand that gives them sanctuary.

  15. Chris_B says

    Jun 13, 2015 at 6:14 pm

    Does no one find the first amendment implications disturbing? I know this is a British case but I imagine most of the commenters here are American. What are you going to say when they come knocking on your door because of some post you made somewhere? Twitter terrorism. How stupid is that? I can see being sued in civil court for libel or violating a non disclosure agreement like Snowden but criminal charges for making a post online? The United States Business Government is already brandishing the
    terrorist label for environmental and animal welfare activists. It’s either equal rights for all or no rights. You either stand up for free speech for “those people” or when they come for you there will be no one to help.

  16. BillWalker says

    Jun 14, 2015 at 2:42 am

    It appears that the whole Western world needs to take a closer look at whoever wants to immigrate.

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