Teenage girl ‘planned grenade and gun attack on British Museum’ after trying to marry Isis fighter

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A teenage girl planned to use guns and grenades in an attack on the British Museum after an Isis fighter she hoped to marry was killed in Syria, a court has heard.

Safaa Boular was 16 when she came into contact with British militant Naweed Hussain through Isis “friends” she met online, the jury at London’s Old Bailey was told.

She allegedly planned to travel to Syria with her older sister but had her passport seized by authorities who stopped her family as they returned from holiday in Morocco in August 2016.

After being released on bail, Ms Boular is said to have discussed committing a terror attack in the UK with Hussain and became increasingly “committed” to the plot when he was killed in an airstrike.

Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson QC told the court Ms Boular professed that all she would need would be a “car and a knife to get what I want to achieve”.

He added: “It appears she planned to launch an attack against members of the public, selected largely at random, in the environs of that cultural jewel and most popular of tourist attractions, the British Museum in central London. This would have been an attack that would at the very least have caused widespread panic, but was intended to involve the infliction of serious injury and death.”

Prosecutors said that Ms Boular had developed an “extremist mindset” and commitment to Isis by early 2016, before she met Hussain online.

Within three months of talking, they declared their love for each other in August of that year and started discussing how Ms Boular would join him, the jury heard.

A conversation from the encrypted messaging app Telegram presented to the court showed the pair allegedly discussing marriage, having children together and receiving money for the journey to Syria.

Messages talked of wearing suicide vests to detonate if caught by enemy fighters, with Hussain writing that they would die “holding hands”.

“I want jannah [paradise after death] so bad,” Ms Boular allegedly wrote.

Mr Atkinson said that although the teenager may have been “influenced and guided by Hussain”, he had not bullied or tricked her.

“She was a young woman speaking to an older and more experienced man, but her commitment and determination was none the less for either of those factors,” he added.

Prosecutors said investigators recovered Isis propaganda videos, photos and songs from her devices, including images of beheadings, training videos and a woman wearing a suicide belt.

Her older sister, Rizlaine, had herself tried to travel to Syria to marry an Isis fighter in 2014 but was stopped in Turkey and returned to the UK, where she married and had a child.

The mother, now 21, allegedly received £3,000 from Hussain to try again with her younger sister and booked flights and a hotel in Turkey to provide a cover story for their travel.

Their plan was thwarted when they were reported missing by their mother and arrested on 21 August 2016, the jury was told.

But they were released and Ms Boular remained in contact with Hussain by using a secret phone hidden inside a cushion.

She allegedly revealed the plan to use “pineapples” – code for grenades – and a Russian gun known as a “tokarev” on the British Museum to intelligence agents posing as Isis members after his death.

Ms Boular was encouraged by her mother and sister to join her fiancé and become a “martyr”, prosecutors said, presenting transcripts of conversations recorded by the security services in their home.

The defendant, who was 17 at the time, is accused of pleading for help and guidance in the attack from online contacts she believed were Isis members.

“Akhi [brother] my heart has been set on this for months,” one message read. “Only Allah can guide me but your assistance is needed desperately … my heart yearns to be reunited with my dear husband for the very first time [sic].”

She was arrested days later on suspicion of trying to travel to Syria.

“As a result, she was not at liberty to put her chilling intentions into practice herself,” Mr Atkinson said.

“She sought to encourage her sister, Rizlaine, to carry the torch forward in her stead.”

Recorded conversations from prison appear to show the two sisters and their mother discussing a terror attack in code, describing the atrocity as a “party”.

Rizlaine Boular, of Clerkenwell in central London, has already admitted planning a knife attack in Westminster with the help and support of their mother Mina Dich, 43, the jury was told.

Ms Boular, now 18, who lived at home with her mother in Vauxhall in southwest London, has denied two counts of preparing acts of terrorism – the first by attempting to join Hussain in Syria and the second for the alleged British Museum plot.

The trial continues.