Lisa Smith has won her legal battle to cross the border into Northern Ireland after challenging a ban handed down by the UK’s Home Office.
The ex-Irish soldier and bride of an ISIS jihadist, whose father in from Belfast, was banned from entering the UK amid security mesures that allow for the exclusion of EEA nationals.
Smith, who is due to go on trial before the Special Criminal Court in 2022 on suspicion of funding terrorism and joining ISIS, argued last month at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) in London that she should be allowed to travel freely in the UK as she is entitled to a British passport.
SIAC today said it was “discriminatory” to uphold the Home Office ban on her travel to the UK, in a ruling Smith’s solicitor, Darragh Mackin, said was “hugely significant for the upholding of basic human rights principles, which include the right to be free from discrimination,”
“The decision to exclude our client was discriminatory and contrary to the basic principles underpinning the Good Friday Agreement,” Mackin claimed.
“As an Irish citizen who resides in a border town, it was always asserted that to restrict her from travelling across the border was unlawful and could not be stood over.
“We warmly welcome the court’s determination today, which will reinstate our client’s basic rights to travel to the north of Ireland at her convenience.”
Smith, who had travelled to Syria in 2015 to live in the caliphate created by ISIS, has a child with the now deceased British jihadist Sajid Aslam.
The 40-year-old former Air Corps member was given permission to return to Ireland in 2019 by then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, with the Special Criminal Court trial expected to take place this January.