Lyrical terrorist wins appeal

7:07am Wednesday 18th June 2008

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THE Heathrow shop assistant who dubbed herself the "lyrical terrorist" had her conviction overturned today.

Samina Malik, 24, of Townsend Road, Southall, was given a nine-month suspended jail sentence at the Old Bailey last December, after being found guilty of collecting documents which could be useful to terrorists.

Ms Malik adopted her nickname because she wrote poetry on till receipts at work.

Today, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, sitting in the Court of Appeal with Mr Justice Goldring and Mr Justice Plender, quashed the conviction after the Crown admitted 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 (CPS) said it has decided not to seek a retrial in the case.

In February the Court of Appeal clarified a section of the Terrorism Act 2000 to say an offence would only be committed if documents could give practical assistance to commit or prepare for an act of terrorism.

Propaganda or theological material did not qualify under this definition.

Today, Lord Phillips said the problem in Malik's case was that it went to the jury on the basis that 14 of the 21 documents which did not fall within Section 58 were also capable of founding a conviction.

He said: "The jury was required to consider not only documents which were capable of being of practical utility for a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, but a large number of documents that were not.

"We consider that there was scope for the jury to have become confused."

As it was, he added, the trial judge, who did not have the benefit of the appeal court's judgment, simply left it to the jury to decide in the case of each document whether it was likely to be useful to a terrorist.

After the hearing, 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.

"However, other documents in her possession, including the al Qaeda Manual, the Terrorist's Handbook, the Mujahideen Poisons Handbook and several military manuals, clearly retain that potential.

"We therefore have no doubt that it was right to bring this prosecution."

However, she said the Crown would not seek a retrial because of the time Ms Malik spent on remand before her first trial, and that she was not prosecuted for her poetry.