(BBC) A supporter of the banned Islamic State terror group has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 14 years after admitting a plot to blow herself up in a bomb attack on St Paul’s Cathedral in London.
Muslim convert Safiyya Shaikh was caught after an elaborate operation — but her case raised doubts in court about whether the drug-addicted and emotionally damaged woman would ever have gone through with the attack.
Shortly before midday on 24 September last year at Uxbridge London Underground station, Safiyya Shaikh had finished wiping away her tears.
She’d found a soulmate — a woman called Azra, who had consoled her as she poured her heart out. And then Shaikh, happy she had found someone who understood, handed over two pink bags so that her new friend could take them away and fill them with bombs to blow up St Paul’s Cathedral.
