A deported ISIS recruiter is believed to have been in touch with Lisa Smith before she left for Syria.
The Jordanian known as “Abu Alaa” operated as Irish suicide bomber Khalid Kelly’s link to the terror group’s leaders.
It is now believed the prolific head hunter, who was out on bail during the former Air Corps steward Smith’s radicalisation, met her in Dublin before she travelled to the Middle East.
In the weeks before her departure, the 38-year-old Dundalk woman is reported to have visited a house in the same area Abu Alaa lived.
She told family and friends she was visiting Muslim pals in the capital but was unwelcome in many study groups due to her radical views. Chief of the Counter Extremism Project Dr Hans-Jakob Schindler said Smith’s meeting with the handler in Ireland follows an established pattern.
He added: “ISIS had a specific online recruitment strategy. They worked long shifts on a very long-term drawn-out recruitment process.
“They would isolate people from their real world contacts by telling them, ‘These are bad people, they will lead you down the wrong path’. Then they would break off contact in order to make the person eager to talk to them.
“They deliberately played psychological games to make the recruit dependent.
“After about six months they would introduce the idea of travel and in the final phase of recruitment they would be asked to go to see the ISIS member closest to them.”
Despite the predominance of online radicalisation, small meetings of well-known terror sympathisers took place in Dublin.
Despite a lengthy legal battle and subsequent deportation, Abu Alaa continued to recruit Irish people on the internet under many aliases.
ISIS bride Lisa Smith 'will not face prison on return' to Ireland
