LONDON - A Moroccan mother of six was sentenced to two years in jail in Britain on Monday after admitting concealing documents inside her burka which could have helped commit an act of terrorism.Houria Chahed Chentouf, 41, pleaded guilty to two offences of possessing such documents -- but she walked free from Manchester Crown Court in northwest England, having served her time on remand.
Chentouf, who has lived in The Hague for more than 20 years, was stopped at Liverpool's John Lennon Airport on October 16 last year.
As officers interviewed her, she accidentally dropped a computer memory stick containing the documents as she went to scratch her leg. It had been tied to an inner sleeve in her burka, prosecutors said.
Chentouf was arrested the following day at a house she was renting in Manchester.
The memory stick contained more than 7,000 files and was described by police as "a mini encyclopaedia of weapons making". One file was an explosives manual for the "Brothers of the Mujahadeen".
Chentouf was charged with possessing an article which gave rise to suspicions that "the possession was for a purpose connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism".
Evidence gathered from Internet chat websites indicated her support for martyrdom, the court heard.
Judge Michael Henshell told Chentouf she had "developed an obsessive interest in jihad and the more extreme forms of Islam".
"Offences of this sort must be sentenced to immediate custody to deter others from behaving as you have."
Though there was a "huge amount" of material on the memory stick, there was "no evidence" that she intended to pass it on and the prosecution accepted she did not intend "putting it into practical use", he said.
The court heard that Chentouf suffers from a mental illness.
The judge said her behaviour might have been affected by this and her culpability was at the lower end of the scale for the offence.