A 20-year-old woman from Zoetermeer has been found not guilty of recruiting people to take part in jihad in Syria by judges in The Hague.

The public prosecution department said Shukri F should be jailed for four years for encouraging six people to become jihadis. The court said in a written statement, F was not guilty of any criminal offences.

‘The court does not doubt the 20-year-old woman’s extreme jihadist tendencies,’ the court said. The woman had tried to encourage two women to travel to Syria and marry jihadis but that is not the same as recruitment, the court said.

Her acquittal was greeted by a cheers from a number of veiled women who attended the hearing, the Volkskrant reports.

Her 20-year-old husband was jailed for three years for joining an Islamic militia in Syria and taking part in jihad. Maher H is the first jihadi to be jailed in the Netherlands on his return from the Middle East.

H was found guilty of preparing to murder and commit manslaughter with a terrorist viewpoint. ‘He joined a jihadi group in Syria and took part in fighting,’ the court statement said. H claims to have been an aid worker delivering food parcels.

The couple, who are married in Islamic law and have a baby, were in Syria from July 2013 to the beginning of this year, the Volkskrant says.

A third man, 23-year-old Imad el O, was given 200 hours of community service and three months in jail for helping a 16-year-old girl travel to Brussels without her parent’s permission. He then planned to travel with her to Syria via Egypt.