All-female IS terror cell face jail over Westminster knife plot

Members of Britain’s first all-female Islamic State terror cell are facing jail for plotting a knife attack on Westminster under the guise of a Mad Hatter’s tea party.

Rizlaine Boular, 22, and her mother Mina Dich, 44, from Vauxhall, south London, pleaded guilty to preparing acts of terrorism last April, while her friend Khawla Barghouthi, 21, admitted failing to alert authorities.

The plot was foiled by a combination of surveillance by counter-terrorism police and MI5 agents, who posed online as IS operatives.

The women, who are in custody, will be sentenced by Judge Mark Dennis QC at the Old Bailey on Friday.

Boular’s sister Safaa Boular, 18 – Britain’s youngest female IS terror plotter  – will be sentenced at a later date after she was found guilty of preparing terrorism in the UK and Syria.

Safaa Boular began planning a grenade and gun attack on the British Museum when she was thwarted from joining her IS husband, who died in a drone strike in Syria.

When she was held in custody for trying to travel to the war zone, she passed the baton to her older sibling Rizlaine.

In coded telephone calls, they discussed a traditional English tea party with an Alice in Wonderland theme, the trial heard.

Rizlaine Boular said she knew “a few recipes for some amazing cakes” for a “proper like English tea party kind of thing”.

Safaa Boular suggested an “Alice in Wonderland theme” telling her sister: “You can be the Mad Hatter ’cause your hair’s crazy.”

Mother-of-four Dich responded: “That will be fun.”

Rizlaine Boular then set about arming herself and looking at targets around the Palace of Westminster with Dich, unaware that they were being watched by counter-terrorism police.

She shared her plans with Barghouthi and even practised a knife attack at her home in Willesden, north west London.

Rizlaine was shot when armed police moved in to arrest the gang but went on to make a full recovery.