THE woman who called herself the "lyrical terrorist" won her appeal yesterday against conviction for collecting information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.
Former Heathrow shop assistant Samina Malik, 24, who was given a nine-month jail sentence suspended for 18 months at the Old Bailey last December, was the first woman convicted under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
The Lord Chief Justice, Lo
rd Phillips, sitting in the Court of Appeal with Mr Justice Goldring and Mr Justice Plender, yesterday quashed the conviction after the Crown conceded that it was unsafe.
He said: "We consider that there is a very real danger that the jury became confused and that the prosecution have rightly conceded that this conviction is unsafe."
Afterwards, the Crown Prosecution Service said it had decided not to seek a retrial in the case.
Malik, who was not in court, adopted her nickname because of the extremist lyrics which she wrote on till receipts at work.
Sue Hemming, head of the CPS's counter terrorism division, said: "Since Ms Malik's conviction, the law has been clarified by the Court of Appeal.
"The result is that some of the 21 documents we relied on in Ms Malik's trial would no longer be held capable of giving practical assistance to terrorists."
Giving judgment yesterday, Lord Phillips said that in February this year, the Court of Appeal gave detailed consideration to Section 58 of the Act and decided that an offence would be committed only if the document or record concerned was of a kind likely to provide practical assistance to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.
Propagandist or theological material did not fall within the Section.
The problem in Malik's case was that it went to the jury on the basis that the 14 documents – out of the 21 – which did not fall within Section 58 were also capable of founding a conviction.
The full article contains 337 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
