Mad Hatter: Teen on trial for UK terror plot with fairy tale code words

Safaa Boular was aged 17 when she allegedly schemed with her sister to launch assaults in the British capital in April, 2017.

She began plotting after failing the year before to join her then-fiance Naweed Hussain, a member of the Islamic State group subsequently killed in Syria, the court heard.

While in custody for allegedly trying to travel to IS territory, she encouraged her elder sister Rizlaine Boular to carry on with the plot, jurors were told.

In calls from jail, she talked with her 21-year-old sibling about arranging an "Alice In Wonderland" themed tea party, which prosecutors said was code for an attack.

The duo also referenced a "Mad Hatter" and "pineapples", other code words in the plot, they added.

During their investigation members of the security services posed as IS fighters online to engage with the pair and track their activities.

Safaa Boular, now 18, told one officer that all she needed was a "car and a knife to get what I want to achieve", jurors were told.

Prosecutors said the sisters and their mother Mina Dich, 43, had carried out reconnaissance around major landmarks in Westminster and purchased a pack of knives and a rucksack.

The trio were arrested on April 27 last year in raids by counter-terrorism police, during which Rizlaine Boular was shot.

She has since pleaded guilty to terrorism offences.

Safaa Boular, who lived at home with her mother in southwest London, has denied two counts of preparing acts of terrorism.

Her defence lawyer Joel Bennathan told jurors that she had been "groomed" by Hussain, who was twice her age, and that her family had "encouraged" and "celebrated" it.

Terror financing

Last month, French President Emmanuel Macron warned that militants "use all contemporary forms of financing"in an address at the closing of a two-day conference on combating the funding of terror groups at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which brought together around 80 ministers and 500 experts.

"We have to cut off terrorism at its roots: it feeds on human trafficking, drugs and weapons. There's always an underlying economy," said Macron, urging global "transparency and mobilisation."

"We have to cross to a new stage in the fight against Daesh and al-Qaeda,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State militant group.

A French presidential official briefing journalists ahead of the terror funding conference this week said that IS income was estimated at about one billion dollars (820 million euros) a year between 2014-2016.

Most of this was from local taxation, oil revenues and looting, with far smaller amounts flowing in from overseas donors. 

IS swept across large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in 2014, declaring a cross-border "caliphate" in areas they controlled.

Syrian and Iraqi forces have since driven IS from nearly all the territory it once held, except for a small presence in the remote desert areas along the border.

But French officials are concerned that the money has been transferred out of Syria and Iraq and could be used to rebuild the organisation. 

"It has been moved since, at least in part. It's probably somewhere," the official said on condition of anonymity. "These groups are very skilful in using sophisticated techniques to move financial resources around."