Mother accused of sympathising with Isis wins High Court fight with social services

A mother-of-two accused of being part of a “family network” of “Isis extremists and sympathisers” has won a High Court fight with council social services bosses.

Council chiefs wanted a judge to bar the woman from taking her children, who are six and three, abroad.

But Mr Justice MacDonald, who heard evidence from a police counter terrorism specialist, has refused after concluding that the council had “not proved” its case against the woman.

Detail has emerged in a ruling by the judge following a private hearing in the Family Division of the High Court in London.

The judge said no-one involved could be identified.

He said the woman, who was born in Somalia and came to the UK as a child, had been married to a man who was thought to be in Syria and may have died there.

Her brother was also thought to been killed in Syria. He had been involved in terrorist activity and was thought to have had links to Al Shabab in Somalia and Al Qaeda before travelling to Syria to join Isis.

Social services bosses said she had: travelled to Turkey with the aim of giving money to her husband and or people linked to Isis; been stopped en route to Turkey by police at Stansted carrying about £5,000 cash in four envelopes, two of which were found in the sleeves of her children’s coats; and been stopped en route to Dubai at London City Airport carrying more than £3,000 in cash.

Bosses said she was “part of a family network of ‘Isis extremists’ and sympathisers”.

They said she sympathised with extremist views and Isis and would try to travel to “areas of the world associated with, or close to ‘large scale extremist activities'” and put her children in danger.

The woman said she had gone to Turkey to try to persuade her husband to leave Syria and return to England and said she had been going on a holiday to Dubai.

She denied trying to fund people linked to Isis and denied having “extremist views”.

Barrister Christopher Barnes, who led the woman’s legal team, said her actions were “naive and misguided” and evidence of “human frailty” rather than radicalisation.

“After much anxious deliberation I have decided that the local authority has not proved its case,” said Mr Justice MacDonald.

“Beyond the fact of her membership of the maternal family, a status the mother has no choice in, there is no cogent evidence to suggest that the mother shares the extremist views espoused by (her brother), or supports the actions of her husband.”

The judge said Islamist extremism and radicalisation was a “brutal and pernicious fact”.

But he added: “It is important in these difficult and challenging circumstances that the court hold fast to the cardinal precepts of fairness, impartiality and due process that underpin the rule of law in our liberal democracy, and from which flows the requirement that the court be satisfied to the requisite standard of proof on the basis of evidence before making findings adverse to an individual.”

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