Safiyya Shaikh expressed no remorse when sentenced to Old Bailey in London
London:
On Friday, a British Muslim convert was jailed for at least 14 years for plotting to detonate Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London, then herself in a suicide bombing attack on the London Underground.
Safiyya Shaikh, 37, confessed to plotting the attacks when she was arrested after contacting an explosives expert who was a police informer.
The heroin user, who converted to Islam in 2007, expressed no remorse when she was sentenced to Old Bailey in London, signaling journalists to use salvation on a finger Islamic State when she was taken away.
Prosecutors also leaked details of a call she made to a friend at the prison, where she said, “I didn’t feel cold, yes – I was ready to continue.”
The court learned that she intended to set off a suicide vest at the nearby London Underground station immediately after detonating the cathedral bombs.
Justice Nigel Sweeney sentenced Shaikh to life in prison with a minimum sentence of 14 years.
He said that her defense team’s statement that she had changed her mind about carrying out the attack before her arrest “was a lie”.
“Your intention was – and remained throughout – strong,” said the judge.
The investigation showed that she had confessed to undercover agents last August that she “would like to kill a lot”.
She visited St. Paul’s Cathedral – a popular tourist destination opposite the London Stock Exchange – in September on a reconnaissance mission and was arrested the following month.
London counterterrorism chief Richard Smith said Shaikh “loved watching graphic videos of terror” and changed his name to Michelle Ramsden after a “really traumatic childhood”.
Britain has witnessed three terrorist-related attacks in the past year.
A convicted jihadist who was on parole after serving a sentence for terrorist offenses was shot by police after stabbing five – two fatally – by London Bridge in the heart of the British capital in November.
Armed police killed another attacker who injured three people in a stabbing attack in the Streatham district of south London in February.
The most recent attack left three people dead in an outburst of stab wounds in a park in Reading, west London, last month.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
