Friend of all-woman terror plotter is jailed for not raising the alarm

Khawla Barghouthi has been jailed and faces deportation for failing to alert authorities to her friend’s planned terror attack

A school friend of a woman jihadi who plotted a terrorist knife attack with her mother and sister faces deportation for failing to raise the alarm.

Khawla Barghouthi was friends with Rizlaine Boular, who planned an atrocity at central London with her younger sister Safaa Boular, 18, and mother Mina Dich, 44.

Barghouthi, a 21-year-old who came to Britain from Tunisia a decade ago, was jailed for two years and four months today andtold she faces automatic deportation when she has completed her prison term.

Rizlaine, 22, and her mother have already been jailed while Safaa is still awaiting sentence. 

The Boular’s and their mother plotted the UK’s first all-woman terror attack, which they called ‘the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party’ in coded messages.

On the day of the proposed attack, on 27 April last year, Rizlaine and Barghouthi were recorded practicing how to carry out the attack at the latter’s home in Harlesden.

Barghouthi could be heard to ask: ‘How are you going to do it? What if they are faster than you?’

Boular replied: ‘I’ll put the knife into… (inaudible) heart instead.’

The girls could be heard laughing about Boular struggling to get the knife out of her rucksack, joking that she will ‘cut my arm by accident’.

Barghouthi remarked: ‘That would be the worst thing that could ever happen like you start a terrorist thing and then you stall.’

She later told Rizlaine ‘Don’t worry, come here, want to practice on me again’, before directing her to ‘Cut me like that’.

Rizlaine was shot three times by armed officers as she and Barghouthi were arrested before the attack could be carried out.

Michael Mansfield QC, defending, said her mother died when she was six and her father disappeared soon after when he could not cope.

Barghouthi lived with a series of relatives and came to the UK from Tunisia at the age of 11 speaking no English, he told the court.

Dich, pictured with her daughters when they were younger, has been jailed for terror offences

Dich, pictured with her daughters when they were younger, has been jailed for terror offences

She struck up a friendship with Rizlaine, a former pupil of the same school as her, in March last year.

The court heard Barghouthi knew her ‘disturbed’ friend was planning something, but ‘didn’t know what it was exactly’ nor ‘how serious’ Boular was about it.

She later claimed to have been ‘horrified’ listening back to the ‘shocking’ recordings from her flat shortly before her arrest which she branded as ‘extravagant talk’ and ‘stupid fooling around’.

Jailing Barghouthi, Judge Mark Dennis QC told her: ‘It is difficult to take any other view than that you did believe that Rizlaine Boular had intended to do so and that it was highly likely, if not certain, that she would indeed carry out her act of violence.

‘You appear to be a caring and intelligent person. However, not only did you fail to report the matter or fail to raise the alarm with anyone in the days before your arrest, thereby helping to save others from harm including your friend herself, but you appear to have done little, if anything, actively to dissuade her from her violent course.’

Dich and Rizlaine admitted engaging in preparation for terrorist acts whilst Barghouti admitted failing to disclose information about an act of terrorism.

Rizlaine was jailed for life with a minimum term of 16 years whilst Dich was jailed for six years and nine months last week. Safaa Boular, of Lambeth, will be sentenced at a later date.



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