In the Melbourne case, Momena Shoma, 26, admitted to engaging in a terrorist act when she stabbed Roger Singaravelu as he napped with his five-year-old daughter at Mill Park on 9 February 2018. She is the first woman to be sentenced for directly carrying out a terrorist attack in Australia.
Crying “Allahu akbar” (God is great), Shoma plunged the knife with such force it embedded into Singaravelu’s neck and the knife tip snapped off.
On Wednesday Justice Lesley Ann Taylor jailed Shoma for 42 years with a minimum of 31-and-a-half years, calling the young woman an “insignificant criminal” with “repugnant logic”.
Dressed in a black niqab showing only her eyes, Shoma did not stand for Taylor.
“Your actions sent waves of horror through the Australian community, but they do not make you a martyr ... they make you a criminal,” Taylor told the Victorian supreme court.
Taylor said Shoma’s “sole purpose” of entering Australia was to commit a terrorist attack, with her enrolment to study a masters of linguistics at La Trobe University a ruse.