Russian woman who pursued Daesh lover to Syria risks jail

MOSCOW: Russian prosecutors on Thursday demanded a five-year jail sentence for a 21-year-old student who tried to enter Syria after falling in love with an Islamic State (Daesh) fighter.

Varvara Karaulova is on trial in the high-profile case after she was detained last year as she tried to cross into war-torn Syria while still a philosophy undergraduate at the renowned Moscow State University.

She was charged with preparing to participate in a "terrorist organisation", but has pleaded not guilty, saying she was motivated by love for a Russian militant fighting in Syria.

The prosecutor asked for the five-year term, arguing that Karaulova needed to be isolated from society because of the "public danger" she represented.

He argued she could have become a sniper or suicide bomber, although the defence team described this as speculation.

In 2012, while still a teenager, she met a man named Airat Samatov online and they wrote to each for three years without ever meeting.

He went to Syria in 2014 and told her he was fighting in the Islamic State group. Karaulova converted to Islam and began wearing a hijab.

She disappeared without warning in May 2015, prompting a frantic search by her parents. It turned out she had flown to Turkey and travelled to the border with other women hoping to join men fighting for IS.

Turkish border guards detained the group and she was forced to fly back to Russia with her father. Russian security forces questioned her on arrival but did not charge her until November that year.

´Didn´t plan to become terrorist´

Her defence team argues that the authorities are trying to make an example of her to warn off other young Russians from trying to head to Syria, where Moscow is conducting a bombing campaign in support of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

"She didn´t plan to become a terrorist," defence lawyer Sergei Badamshin told the court. She is due to give her final speech in court on December 21, after the court´s judges will retire to consider the verdict.

A considerable number of the foreign fighters with the militant IS group in Syria are from Russia, with Moscow claiming it has killed thousands of its nationals and citizens from other ex-Soviet states in Syria.

But most of those from Russia fighting in Syria come from Muslim communities principally in the volatile North Caucasus region and as an ethnic Russian woman from a privileged background Karaulova is a rarity.