A MUSLIM shop assistant who wrote poems calling for attacks on the West has today become the first woman to be convicted under the Terrorism Act.

Samina Malik, 22, from Southall, who worked for WH Smith at Heathrow Airport, wrote long notes about Soviet spy weapons and fighting techniques, the Old Bailey heard.

Other writings included notes on sniper rifles, and rocket-propelled weapons, and a document entitled "How To Win Hand-to-Hand Fighting."

Malik, of Townsend Road, denied two counts under section 58 of the Terrorism Act, 2000, but after deliberating for 19 hours, the jury convicted her on one count of possessing an article likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.

She had used the pen name Lyrical Babe, but later changed it to the Lyrical Terrorist.

Malik insisted she was only using the information to write poems and earn herself "fame" as a poet.

She said: "It was only because it was a cool name. It doesn't mean I'm a terrorist. It is just a username.

"I feel ashamed. This was me showing off, trying to be something I wasn't, trying to get that popularity from male users more than anything.

"I wanted to get married so I pretended to be something I wasn't. Basically being stupid and ignorant."

Her poems praised Osama Bin Laden and suicide bombers.

She had written from an early age, and some of her poems had been published in school booklets while she was a pupil at Villiers High School, in Boyd Avenue, Southall.

But after she left school she became involved with radical Islamic politics and went to see speeches by clerics Abu Hamza and Sheikh Omar Bakri.

The Recorder of London, Judge Peter Beaumont QC, bailed Malik but warned her she was facing jail.

She is due to be sentenced on Thursday, December 6, while pre-sentence reports are prepared.