Mum hid phone in bra for jail calls to Islamist extremist husband

From the Liverpool Echo

A radicalised mum who funded Islamist terrorism contacted her extremist ‘husband’ from jail with a phone hidden in her bra.

Victoria Webster and Amaani Noor – an ex-girlfriend of Liverpool footballer Sheyi Ojo – sent around £50 each to a terrorist group in Syria. When Webster was jailed for 17 months at Liverpool Crown Court in December 2019, she claimed she was now “on a path to reform”.

But today the court heard Webster had secretly ‘married’ Ricardo Langaigne aka Ricardo MacFarlane – an extremist thug linked to a roll call of British extremists, including Fusilier Lee Rigby’s murderer Michael Adebolajo, radical preacher Anjem Choudary, fellow ‘Muslim Patrol’ yobs Jordan Horner and Royal Barnes, and bomb-making manual hoarder Afsor Ali.

Rebecca Smith, prosecuting, said prison officers at HMP Styal searched Webster and another woman’s cell on July 29, 2020.

Both inmates denied having anything that they shouldn’t (then) Webster confessed and “took a thin mobile phone from within her bra area and handed it to the officer”.

When interviewed on October 8, the Muslim convert gave a prepared statement, in which she admitted having the phone. 

Ms Smith said Webster claimed she had the phone to ring family and friends because “she needed their love, support and encouragement to keep on going”.

Analysis of the phone showed one number was saved with just a full stop as the name, which Webster contacted 301 times, including both incoming and outgoing calls and texts. Ms Smith said this number was attributed to Langaigne and information provided by police indicated the risk he was said to pose to national security.

Ms Smith said: “Of note is offending which gives an indication of an extremist mindset. Importantly, in 2013 he was convicted of an offence of affray relating to an incident when he acted in the company of Jordan Horner, also of concern to national security. They attacked a group of men drinking in the street, shouting ‘kill the non-believers’ and describing themselves as the Muslim Patrol.“

The court heard Langaigne was convicted of racially aggravated harassment for making racist remarks to a police officer and has a history since 2010 of participating in debates and demonstrations in the name of militant jihadist network Al-Muhajiroun (ALM).

Ms Smith said “such was the level of concern” over the risk he posed that Webster was not allowed to use a prison phone to speak with him, despite stating that she had “married” him in 2018.

She said: “There is no information to say they have ever physically met, but they have communicated over the phone, she had spoken to him by WhatsApp, and in her eyes she believed they were man and wife.”

Ms Smith added: “The concern is having access to the phone provided the defendant with an opportunity to have regular contact with a person who it is believed presents a potential risk to public safety.”

She said Webster was due to be released on licence on December 23 last year, but had since been remanded in custody.

Jeremy Hawthorn, defending … said the last information about Langaigne was from 2017 and as he understood it, his client’s ‘husband’ was now “at liberty” and while “very likely subject to monitoring requirements”, there had not been an assessment of the current risk his contact with Webster posed.

Judge Menary said while Webster may not have met Langaigne, it was a feature of the last case that she and in particular Noor had met men “some of them involved in significant terrorist activity” and “entered into remote forms of Islamic marriage”.

He said while that may not be legally binding, he accepted Webster believed they were husband and wife, but she knew “full well” she shouldn’t be talking to him.

Judge Menary said: “If he was someone you then regarded as your loving husband, I have no doubt it was utterly misguided.”

He said Langaigne had “longstanding and deep seated sympathies” towards groups supporting extremist actions “promoting fundamentalist Muslim objectives by terrorist activity” and attended events which “sadly and horrifically glorified the killing of Fusiler Rigby”.

The judge said he didn’t know whether Langaigne was still involved in that conduct, but that was “the sort of person” she ‘married’. He said Webster wouldn’t be punished for their relationship, but for breaking the law and her prohibition “quite deliberately”. 

Jailing her for eight months, he warned: “You have already paid a very high price in your personal life for being involved with this type of activity. The sooner you realise that and completely divorce yourself from this activity, if not the individual concerned, then all the better for you.”