Ogaba, a former Catholic altar boy from Finsbury Park in north London, converted to Islam while in jail for aggravated burglary between 2004 and 2006 and became increasingly radical.
He disappeared from the family home in September 2014, taking his passport and clothes, and his family reported him missing to the police.
He left a note to his mother which read: ‘I know you probably think I am crazy or something. I am not going because I dislike you or anything like that.
‘I am going to implement sharia law. I have full conviction in what my brothers are doing. I love you mum and hope you revert to Islam one day.’
Ogaba travelled to Cologne and Gaziantep in southern Turkey before making it to war-torn Syria. He was eventually captured by Western-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in January 2019 and died in custody from tuberculosis in April 2022.
In the meantime, the SDF recovered a number of laptops, hard drives, SD memory cards, headphones and cables during a raid in Hajin in north-east Syria on December 22 2018.
In photographs on the hard drive, Ogaba posed wearing a bucket hat as he handled a machine gun on a rooftop, straddled a high-powered blue and white Suzuki motorbike and posed in a room where a homemade bomb had been laid out.
Other photos show him laughing with terrorist comrades and firing a gun on a clifftop.
There was nothing to suggest the images of Ogaba had been seen by his family but there were also five receipts for Western Union money transfers from Uganda to Kenya and Lebanon, between February 2016 and May 2018, amounting to £2,926.
A devout Catholic mother has since been jailed alongside her businesswoman daughter for helping to fund terrorism by sending money to her brother who had fled to Syria to fight for ISIS.
Stella Oyella, 53, a psychiatric nurse, and her daughter Vanessa Atim, 32, sent Joseph Ogaba – a former computer programmer who was Oyella’s brother and Atim’s uncle made five payments totalling more than £1,800.
Neither woman had any sympathy for ISIS, with the trial hearing how they acted on appeals from a ‘desperate’ family member who persuaded them he needed money to survive.
Police then pieced together five further financial transactions sent from London between March and October 2017.
They discovered that a relative had made cash withdrawals and put the money into Oyella’s account before it was transferred to Uganda, where Atim was working, and from there to Lebanon and Qatar.
Hossein Zahir KC, defending, said she had been ‘successfully manipulated’ by Ogaba and added: ‘This is a young woman who is quite exceptional, has made genuine progress in her life and sought to help others.’
The Old Bailey was shown a series of messages between family members as Ogaba pressurised them to send money.
One relative stated: ‘He sends text to blackmail people as if he’s hated, yet he wasn’t forced to go there.’
Explaining the transfers, Atim told the court her uncle had rung her from Syria, telling her he was ‘desperate’ and needed the money to ‘survive.’
Atim said she believed he had got married, left ISIS and was struggling to pay for food.
But messages showed that Ogaba had left his wife for two weeks and believed he might not return, suggesting he was still spending periods on the frontline.
The court heard that ISIS had initially paid its fighters a salary but payments became more inconsistent as the tide turned against them.
Garry Green KC, defending Oyella, described her as a mother and grandmother of ‘impeccable character’ who was a ‘committed, selfless, care professional,’ affectionately known to work colleagues as ‘Mum.’
The manager at the NHS trust where Oyella worked, described her as a ‘fantastic human being’ whose ‘work ethic is truly amazing’ and said she had won awards, nominated by her colleagues.
John Armitage, Oyella’s parish priest at St Margaret’s in Canning Town, East London, said she was an ‘honest citizen of the highest character and integrity.’
‘You choose your friends, you don’t choose your family,’ Mr Green added. ‘She is nurturing, considerate, a kind woman committed to life, not death. This is no terrorist sympathiser or supporter.’
Images Atim posted on Twitter showed her at a series of events, promoting the enterprise, called Pro Intern, which found places for interns with businesses.
‘Faith is very important to me, it is my foundation and something that has helped me grow into the woman I am today,’ she told the Old Bailey.
However, Annabel Darlow KC, prosecuting, said messages showed that Ogaba had left his wife for two weeks and believed he might not return, suggesting he was spending periods on the frontline.
‘The defendants, instead of attempting to use his financial hardship to leverage his return to the UK and abandon IS, simply sent more money,’ Ms Darlow said.
Great lengths were taken to hide the financial transactions with the use of ‘middlemen’ overseas, she added.
The mother and daughter were convicted of terrorist fundraising and broke down and had to be helped from the dock after they were jailed by judge Mark Dennis KC.
There were shouts from the public gallery at the Old Bailey of ‘stay strong’ after the judge had earlier told lawyers that he was finding the sentencing exercise difficult because of the women’s ‘commendable’ character.
Mr Dennis accepted that their motivation was neither ‘ideological’ nor a desire to help Ogaba engage in ‘terrorist activities.’
However, he told them that it must have been ‘obvious’ that Ogaba was ‘yet another committed individual who had decided to leave their home country and travel to Syria to join the cause of violent jihad promoted’ by ISIS.
‘In truth you both turned a blind eye to what your brother and uncle were engaged in,’ he said. ‘By doing so you were in effect giving support to the terrorist activity with which, in all likelihood, he was still associated.
‘The plague of terrorism and terrorist related offending has to be taken seriously by the courts in the interest of all who desire a peaceful, democratic and tolerant society free from such dreadful violence.’
Commander Dominic Murphy, who leads the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command, said after sentencing: ‘These women went to great lengths to first arrange, and then distance themselves from money transfers to Ogaba.
‘They knew he had travelled to Syria to join a terrorist group and by sending him cash. They helped him remain with Daesh.
‘This case shows how we work with our international partners to close the net on people who support terrorist activity, no matter how much time has passed.’
