Mother is first woman guilty of joining Isis

From the witness box at Birmingham crown court, Shakil gave an extraordinary account of her time in Raqqa, the de facto capital of Isis, and described how she managed to escape after becoming disillusioned and frightened.

The 26-year-old had told the court that she was unaware of the evil associated with ISIS and simply wanted to live under Sharia law.

But a photo on her phone showed her posing with a firearm and wearing an Islamic State balaclava, and another photo showed her posing in Syria under the group’s flag.

She was arrested when police boarded her flight home at London’s Heathrow Airport last February.

During the trial the jury also heard that about 60 British females were thought to have gone to Syria. Farewell notes left for her family showed she had no intention of returning home, prosecutors said.

“ISIS is a risky organisation and, at the moment, she should be treated as a unsafe individual”, a Metropolitan Police spokesperson said.

Shakil told the court that after deciding to escape, the pair rushed back to the Turkish border by road, avoided a three-man IS patrol on the way, and then handed themselves in to the Turkish military.

British children’s charities have denounced how Shakil put her young son at substantial risk of death by taking him to Raqqa in the middle of a civil war.

According to a 2015 study by the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, 10% of the Westerners to have joined militant groups like Islamic State in Syria are women.

“She denied joining Daesh but her membership was proven as a result of enquiries carried out by the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit and other agencies”, West Midlands Police said in a statement.

As a outcome, British authorities say they are now arresting more women on suspicion of terrorist offenses than ever before. In one video, released January 11, Syrian women are filmed urging Western mothers not to travel to their country.

She went from being a quiet, thoughtful, unreligious woman to an extremist so notorious even other ISIS recruits knew her story.