Glaswegian ‘jihadi bride’ faces prosecution on return to UK

A 20 year-old Scottish woman will be prosecuted for recruiting other British people to Islamic state if she returns to the UK.

Aqsa Mahmood, who travelled to Syria in November 2013 to marry a member of the terrorist group known as ISIS or ISIL. Police are investigating her use of a twitter account and blog under the name Umm Layth, which means Mother of the Lion, to recruit others to the extremist cause.

Giving evidence to the Commons Home Affairs Committee yesterday, Assistant Commissioner at the Metropolitan Police Mark Rowley said: "The Scottish woman who has been reported overseas, that case is well advanced in the work that is going on in terms of potentially prosecuting her if she ever returns."

It is thought privately educated student Mahmood was in contact with at least one of the three teenagers who went missing from London last month, thought to be travelling to Syria.

Her family in Glasgow said they were "full of horror and anger that their daughter may have had a role to play in the recruitment of these young girls", in a statement issued through their solicitor Aamer Anwar.

However Anwar said there were "far more serious" questions in relation to the case.

“We know from the police that they regularly monitor Aqsa’s online accounts so they would have been well aware of this contact.

“The fact that they didn’t contact the girl’s family to let them know suggests that either there has been monumental incompetence on the part of the security services or they simply don’t give a damn. If she was responsible for the recruitment and radicalisation of young girls then why did the security services not share that information with the families before it was too late?" he said.