Sally-Anne Frances Jones (17 November 1968 – c. June 2017) was a British terrorist, Islamist, and UN-designated recruiter and propagandist for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), known variously as Umm Hussain al-Britani,[a] Sakinah Hussein,[b] and the White Widow.
[2] Brought up as a Catholic, she participated in Christian youth groups while a teenager, leaving school at 16 and entering employment working for L’Oréal selling cosmetics.
[3] A former punk rock guitarist and singer active during the 1990s in an all-female band called Krunch,[4] Jones is reported to have been living on welfare benefits (which she denied) in a council house in Chatham, Kent and to have used a food bank before her departure for Syria.
[11] The following month, Jones was one of four Britons placed on the UN's most-wanted list at the request of the British prime minister David Cameron.
[15] She is believed to have recruited hundreds of British women to work for ISIS and in 2016 called on female sympathisers in Britain to make terrorist strikes in London, Glasgow, and Wales during Ramadan.
[4] American court documents made available in spring 2017 linked Jones and her husband to at least a dozen ISIS plots; many of these either did not take place or were stopped while being put into action.
[2] According to Shiraz Maher, Jones is the first woman to have been directly targeted in an airstrike, and one of only two women considered at the time by the American state department as a foreign terrorist combatant.
[22][23] According to guidance from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Jones may not be considered a member of ISIS (she would be a legitimate target if she was), because she did not carry out a "continuous combat function".
[citation needed] A member of "The Beatles" terrorist group, Alexanda Kotey, said on ITV News in late May 2019 that Jones and her son were killed in a building that was shelled on 25 May 2017, a few days after the Manchester Arena bombing.