BICOM

An Israeli mother of five from the northern Arab town of Shfaram was sentenced yesterday to a 22-month prison sentence, after being found guilty of attempting to join ISIS in Syria.

Iman Kanjo, 44, who has a PhD in Islamic Studies, is married to the imam of a local mosque in Shfaram. She travelled to Turkey last summer with her father and then went missing. Although she did not succeed in crossing the border into Syria, the defence admitted that Kanjo had intended to join ISIS, although not to support violence but to live under Sharia law.

Kanjo addressed the court and said that she deeply regrets her actions. The judge said: “So intense was her desire to join ISIS in Syria that she even hid her plans from her husband and her family, and only shared her secret with her father.”

Kanjo was handed a fine and a custodial sentence, as her actions “endangered both the lives of the citizens of Israel and the country as a whole” according to the verdict.

Just last week, 23-year-old Ibrahim Hassan Agbariyeh, from the northern Arab town of Umm al-Fahm, was also charged with attempting to join ISIS. He was stopped by Turkish authorities attempting to cross the border into Syria. There have been several cases of ISIS-related activity in Israel. Among them, an Israeli citizen from Umm al-Fahm is said to have been killed in a US-led bombing raid in Syria in March.

Meanwhile, in a separate security-related incident yesterday, a Palestinian woman attempted to stab an Israeli soldier near the West Bank city of Ariel. The soldier shot the attacker, who was taken to a hospital in Petach Tikva for treatment. An IDF statement said that “an assailant armed with a knife attempted to stab a soldier at the Gitai Avisar junction west of Ariel. Responding to immediate danger, the soldier shot and detained the attacker.”