Terror charge against 'foul-mouthed talkaholic' preposterous, court told
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Version 0 of 1. A woman accused of arranging to send €20,000 (£16,000) to her husband fighting in Syria concealed in her friend's underwear is a "foul-mouthed … phone addicted, weed-smoking kaffir" and an unlikely terrorist, her barrister has told a court. Amal El-Wahabi, 27, allegedly asked her friend Nawal Msaad, also 27, to take the cash to Turkey at the request of Aine Davis, known by his Muslim name Hamza. Msaad was stopped by police at Heathrow airport in January before she boarded a flight. She handed over the rolled-up notes hidden in her knickers, the Old Bailey heard. Delivering his closing speech on Monday, El-Wahabi's barrister Mark Summers described his client to jurors. "A more unlikely terrorist you may never have seen in this court," he said. "Just picture this: Amal, that foul-mouthed, red-haired, talkaholic, opinionated, phone-addicted, weed-smoking kaffir, playing the dutiful burqa-clad [woman] cooking around the campfire in Syria. If a jury in this court in its 200 years has been invited to swallow a more preposterous proposition, I personally would have paid good money to see it." El-Wahabi put her hand over her mouth as she laughed at his comments from the dock. Summers went on: "Added to these unsuitable jihadist personality traits is selfishness. Everything that Amal says and does is about her. She wouldn't even attend a charity event if she couldn't get in free." He said Hamza, 30, who the court had previously heard was a drug dealer who was regularly in trouble with police, was involved in "drugs, drugs and more drugs". Summers told the jury of five men and seven women that they would need to answer two questions as they considered their verdicts, the first being whether Hamza was a terrorist. "If you're not sure that he's a terrorist, then it follows that you can't be sure that the money was for terrorism," he said. "Two: even if you answer question one in the affirmative, you also have to be sure that Amal knew he was a terrorist. If she did not, then it follows that she could not have believed that the money was for terrorism. Even if Davis was a terrorist and Amal knew it, it still does not inevitably follow that terrorism was the target for the money." Summers said El-Wahabi was clearly intending to take her two young children to live in Turkey, and that was what the money was to go towards. "That's what she was telling people at the time," he said. "She hasn't made it up – it's there in her messages." El-Wahabi, of north-west London, and Msaad, of north London, both deny a charge of funding terrorism. The trial continues. |