A shop assistant at Heathrow airport who called herself the Lyrical Terrorist has become the first woman to be convicted under the Terrorism Act.

Samina Malik, 22, who wrote poetry in praise of beheadings and the Mujahidin, including a poem called How to Behead, had a wealth of extremist material stored on her home computer. She wept as a jury at the Old Bailey in London found her guilty of possessing records likely to be useful for terrorism.

The head of Scotland Yard’s Counter-terrorism Command said that her conviction was a signal to all that possession of such material was “a serious criminal offence”.

Malik, who worked at a Heathrow branch of WH Smith, was arrested after an e-mail written by her was discovered on the computer of another terrorism suspect. At her home in Southall, West London, police found a library of extremist material on her computer.

The files included a firearms manual and a manual for a sniper rifle, a Mujahidin Poison Handbook, a manual for rocket-propelled weapons and a document entitled How To Win Hand-to-hand Fighting.

Malik’s profile on a social networking website used the name Lyrical Terrorist and featured a picture of a woman in a niqab holding a gun and revealed that she “loved jihad”. She listed “helping the Mujihadeen in every way I can” under her interests.

Jonathan Shape, for the prosecution, said: “She is a committed Islamic extremist who supports terrorism and terrorists. She had a library of material that she had collected for terrorist purpose. That collection could be extremely useful to someone planning terrorist activity.”

Police also found copies of Osama bin Laden’s declaration of war against the West, and the documents The al-Qaeda Manual and The Terrorist’s Handbook.

In notes written on the back of till rolls, she said: “The desire within me increases every day to go for martyrdom . . . the need to go increases second by second.”

Inquiries revealed that Malik had applied to join extremist subscription-only websites, and e-mails from her revealed that she had inquired about donating to mujahidin groups.

Malik attended Villiers High School in Southall, where she was captain of the basketball, football and hockey teams. She was in the school choir, volunteered for the St John Ambulance and hoped to work in tourism but failed her GNVQ. Malik took a job at WH Smith after leaving school.

She had written verse from an early age and some of her early poems were published in her school booklets. But after leaving she was drawn to Islamist radicals and went to hear Abu Hamza al-Masri and Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed speak.

She told the court that she had initially used the pseudonym Lyrical Babe and had changed it to Lyrical Terrorist. “It was only because it was a cool name. It doesn’t mean I’m a terrorist. It is just a user name.”

She added: “I feel ashamed. This was me showing off, trying to be something I wasn’t, trying to get that popularity from male users.”

The defence described her poetry as being in the tradition of Wilfred Owen. John Burton said that there was no evidence of any intent on her part to become involved in terrorism. “Poetry can be described as disturbing, shocking, even repulsive. What is the intent? Is it to shock, to revolt? That in itself doesn’t make it criminal and it doesn’t help you to get into the mind of who has written it.”

Malik, who will be sentenced at a later hearing, was cleared of a more serious charge of possessing an article “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, of Scotland Yard, said: “Malik held violent extremist views which she shared over the internet. She also tried to donate money to a terrorist group. She had the ideology, ability and determination to access and download material, which could have been useful to terrorists.”

How to Behead

Hold him
Tie the arms behind his back
And bandage his legs together
Just by the ankles
Blindfold the punk
So that he won't hesitate as much
For on seeing the sharp pointy knife
He'll begin to shake
And continuously scream like an eedyat
And jiggle like a jelly
Trust me – this will sure get you angry
It's better to have at least two or three brothers by your side
Who can hold the fool
Because as soon as the warm sharp knife
Touches his naked flesh
He'll come to know what'll happen

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