SYDNEY, Australia — The wife of an Islamic State group recruiter has given the militants’ single-finger salute outside a Sydney court after becoming the first person convicted under a new state law criminalizing the refusal to stand for a judge. Moutia Elzahed, the wife of jailed Islamic State extremist Hamdi Alqudsi, was the first person in the Australian state of NSW to face the charge after she refused to rise for a judge in 2016 purportedly on religious grounds, as Breitbart London reported. The 50-year-old Muslim then gave the terrorist organisation’s one-finger salute outside Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court while her friend called journalists “cockroaches”. Elzahed, dressed in a black niqab, gown and gloves, sat with her arms folded in the Downing Centre Local Court after magistrate Carolyn Huntsman delivered the landmark decision. A Sydney Magistrate said Ms El-Zahed "communicated a lack of respect for the court and the judge" by not rising to her feet when District Court Judge Audrey Balla came in and out of court during a civil hearing in 2016. Ms Huntsman ruled that the law Elzahed was charged under — introduced in 2016 following a string of high-profile cases where Muslim defendants refused to stand on religious grounds — was constitutionally valid. In 2016, Elzahed had been trying to sue the state and federal governments on claims of police violence and wrongful imprisonment over a raid on her Sydney home two years earlier.
Islamic State recruiter Hamdi Alqudsi's wife Moutia Elzahed becomes the first person convicted of an offence for refusing to stand for a judge in court, with a magistrate finding her guilty of nine counts of disrespectful behaviour in court.