(RTÉ) Former Irish soldier Lisa Smith has been sentenced to 15 months in prison at the Special Criminal Court for membership of ISIS, the Islamic State terrorist organisation.
The 40-year-old mother-of-one is the first person to be convicted in an Irish court of membership in another country of an Islamic terrorist organisation.
The court rejected her claims that she had gone to Islamic State simply out of a sense of religious obligation and for the innocent purpose of living under Sharia law and raising a family in a Muslim state.
It found her not guilty of a second charge of funding terrorism, saying that it is reasonably possible that she sent €800 to an Isis fighter and propagandist John Georgelas in May 2015 for his personal use or for “humanitarian reasons,” after he had been injured during fighting in Syria.
