Bad things were happening but ‘it wasn’t my problem,’ Lisa Smith tells court

Lisa Smith, a former Irish soldier who denies membership of Islamic State, saw a dead man hanging on a cross with his eyes gouged out while she was living in Syria, the Special Criminal Court has heard.

Ms Smith told gardaí that she thought it was “disgusting” but it didn’t make her want to leave Syria at that time.

“It wasn’t my problem, what these people do. I was there to build the Islamic State and that was it,” She said.

Other people were “doing things because they had a belief they were doing the right things” but she had nothing to do with that, she said.

Gardaí put it to her that the fact she didn’t want to leave having seen this “atrocity” where a man had his eyes “gouged out” suggested she was “involved in Isis”.

They said that despite this and other atrocities she didn’t decide she wanted to leave Syria until after the fall of Raqqa when Isis surrendered the city in 2017.

Ms Smith replied: “I’m not going to talk any more. I’m going to start saying no comment. I went to the Islamic State, I went to build an Islamic State.”

She accepted that there were “bad things happening” but she said “you would have to be a Muslim to understand”. She said she never saw anyone being executed and while living outside Raqqa from early 2016 until the fall of Raqqa she did not see bombs falling.

“I didn’t see anything of that, nothing of that, never seen a public execution, never seen anyone shot in the head and killed. This one guy hanging on the cross was the only thing I had seen, that was just one time,” she said.

During an earlier interview Ms Smith revealed that she was in a taxi some time after June 2016 in Raqqa when her husband told her to look away as they approached a roundabout. He told her there was a man hanging there on a cross with his eyes “taken out”. She said she saw the man but didn’t know what his crime was. She had heard he may have been a spy.

Ms Smith (39) from Dundalk, Co Louth has pleaded not guilty to membership of an unlawful terrorist group, Islamic State, between October 28th, 2015 and December 1st, 2019.

She has also pleaded not guilty to financing terrorism by sending €800 in assistance, via a Western Union money transfer, to a named man on May 6th, 2015.

Detective Garda Edward Carr told prosecution counsel Sean Gillane SC that he interviewed Ms Smith several times over four days at Kevin St Garda Station following her arrest when Ms Smith arrived back in Ireland on December 1st, 2019.

The witness agreed that Ms Smith told gardaí that her husband from that time kept her in the house, wouldn’t let her go out and prevented her from reading magazines or watching videos.

‘As normal a life as possible’

“He would just try to give me as normal a life as possible in the circumstance of the Islamic State, so I didn’t even know what was going on,” she said.

When gardaí said it was “hard to believe” that she didn’t see public executions and other atrocities while in Raqqa, she replied: “I swear on the Quran. I never seen any executions, anything like that. Just that one body.” She said that if she had seen an execution she would need psychological help.

After Raqqa fell, she said she wanted to leave but her husband wouldn’t let her go and she had no money to get herself out.

Ms Smith also denied to gardaí that she funded terrorism by sending €800 to an American Islamic convert named John Georgelas, aka Abu Hassan, who wrote Isis propaganda and fought with the terrorist organisation.

Ms Smith told gardaí that she sent the money to Hassan in 2015 because he said he was in need.

When Ms Smith arrived in Syria she said she asked Georgelas what the money was spent on and Georgelas’s then wife said she used it to buy a laptop and the rest was spent on food.

Ms Smith said she sent the money for Georgelas’s personal use and denied that she intended it to support a terrorist organisation. She said: “I don’t really feel I have anything to hide. It was a straightforward thing, he asked me for charity and I gave it.”

She said that Georgelas had asked for €2,000 but she didn’t want to send him that much. Ms Smith also told gardaí that she had a problem all her life that she can’t say no when people ask for things.

Det Gda Carr agreed with defence counsel Justin McQuade BL that Ms Smith had been making smaller charitable donations to Georgelas since 2013.

He also agreed that through thousands of questions during eleven interviews over four days she did not once rely on her right to silence.

The detective said he recalled that the more gardaí pressed Ms Smith, the more she said that she travelled to build an Islamic state and not to join a terrorist organisation. Mr McQuade said his client told gardaí that the bad things happening weren’t her fault, she didn’t commit the crimes and her husband shielded her from public executions. Det Gda Carr said he recalled Ms Smith saying those things.

The trial continues in front of Mr Justice Tony Hunt, presiding, and Judge Gerard Griffin and Judge Cormac Dunne at the non-jury court.