Sandeep Samra, a British Sikh teenager who wanted to travel to Syria to join ISIS, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison by the Birmingham Crown Court.
Police were informed of Samra's plans to work for the ISIS by her teachers. Although the teen, who had converted to Islam without her family's knowledge when she was 15, claimed she wanted to travel to Syria to work as a nurse, extreme content supporting ISIS was found on her phone.
Judge Melbourne Inman QC told Samra: “You were deeply radicalised and in possession of the most extreme material. Fortunately, you were found and stopped before you were ever able to in fact travel.”
According to reports, Samra had researched the ways she could be smuggled out of Britain and the routes she could take to reach Syria so that she could take part in "jihad."
"May Allah give me death in the cause," wrote Samra in a social media message shortly before her arrest last July.
"I need a passport. If infidels know you support, they take your passport. Britain is very strict," another message on her phone read.
Prosecutor Sarah Whitehouse told the court that Samra discussed marriage with multiple extremists."We can see the people with whom Miss Samra was communicating - we appear to have six respondents (in 2015) and also six in 2017," said Whitehouse.
Samra first applied for passport in September 2015. But she couldn't take possession of it as it was handed to the police by her father a month later after teachers reported her to an anti-extremism team.
The passport was then cancelled, and Samra applied for a new one in June 2017. She was so frantic on getting a new one that she asked staff members at her old school to countersign documents. She reportedly became frustrated and rude when her requests weren't met.
Anti-Racism protesters come out in support of refugees outside the Cladhan Hotel on September 13, 2025 in Falkirk, Scotland. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
