Momena Shoma — a convicted Islamic militant

With the prospect of parole still some years away, Kailee Mitz did her best to settle into life in an Australian prison and it was the last place she expected to be a victim of the crumbling Islamic State.

In October 2020, the Canadian was awaiting sentencing for her part in a plot to smuggle more than 15 kilograms of methamphetamines into Australia.

She was at Melbourne’s Dame Phyllis Frost Centre when she was ambushed by Momena Shoma — a convicted Islamic militant — who tried to kill her with a pair of gardening shears that had been secreted in her headscarf.

Up until that point, Shoma — who was already serving a 42-year sentence over a terror-related stabbing — appeared to show little interest in her victim.

However, in reality, she had been planning the attack for at least eight months when she was moved into a more-open wing of the prison, bringing her into Mitz’s orbit.

Mitz — who is from London, Ontario — had no sense that things were to take a dramatic and violent turn.

“We weren’t overly friendly with each other … but I was kind to her, when she got let out, I would say good morning and ask her how she’s doing,” she told the ABC through her lawyers.

As Mitz reclined on a couch with a novel about a fictitious call girl, Shoma calmly walked into the Canadian’s low-security unit, armed with gardening shears that another prisoner had hidden in the laundry.

It was hard for Mitz, 28, not to notice the shears immediately — they were about 30 centimetres long, with black and bright orange handles.

“I asked her what she was doing,” she recalled.

“Then she started swinging them around and then she raised them up … she was looking at me in my eyes … and she brought them down and tried to stab me.

“Her eyes were just black and she was just staring at me and she looked like she was just possessed.”

Shoma ‘was smiling’ during frenzied attack

What happened next is still a blur to Mitz, who has three young children.

“At that very moment, I don’t know what I was thinking. All I knew was that I just had to get away from her and that place,” she said.

She threw up her arms and Shoma stabbed her in the hand before Mitz flipped herself over the back of the couch, and fell on the floor.

At the same time, another inmate seized Shoma from behind and pinned her arms, which allowed Mitz to race through the door and summon the guards.

Shoma was taken to a holding cell in another unit, but not before a terrified Mitz glimpsed her face.

“She was just looking at me and she was smiling,” she said.

Eyewitnesses later revealed that Shoma was seen happy and laughing in her cell after the attack.

Shoma, now 29, was remarkably frank and told investigators that she had been hoping to spark international headlines by attacking Mitz, who was a Canadian citizen.

She cheered when they charged her with terror offences, and told them that Allah would be pleased with her.

How Shoma came to arm herself with the gardening shears and stab her victim in a low-security unit is the crux of a new lawsuit launched in the County Court of Victoria by Mitz, who is suing the state for unspecified damages.

The Department of Justice is yet to file a defence.

In Mitz’s statement of claim, she alleges that prison officials breached their duty of care to her and were negligent because they failed to supervise Shoma, assess her risk to other prisoners, install cameras in the low-security unit, and stop the woman from accessing weapons.

She has also made sensational claims against senior prison staff at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, who she said tried to deter her from telling anyone about the attack, including family members and Canada’s High Commissioner to Australia.

When she ignored this advice, she alleges that senior prison officials began “interrogating” her.

“I felt very intimidated. I felt like, at that current moment, that I was in the wrong,” Mitz told the ABC through her lawyers.

“They just kept asking me why I called [the High Commissioner] and that’s when I brought up the fact that I felt that they were negligent, and that they should have monitored [Shoma] better.

“Their response to me was that we can’t just keep her in a cell and throw away the key, which is kind of contradictory because that is what they are doing to her now, and it’s unfortunate that it took her trying to kill me for that to happen.”…

Eight days after arriving in Australia from Bangladesh on a student visa, Shoma knelt over Roger Singaravelu, who was napping with his five-year-old daughter, and used both hands to plunge a large kitchen knife into his neck while yelling, “Allahu akbar”.

Immediately afterwards, Shoma told nearby neighbours and first responders that she had stabbed the man, and was ordered to do so by the Islamic State.

Shoma was equally brazen in the moments after she tried to kill Mitz.

“The stupid girl, just, I don’t know what she does, she falls off the couch and runs away outside. Loser. Coward. Just stop so that I can kill you,” Shoma told investigators.

“I would have killed her, stabbed her to death, that was my intention.

“If I get released, then I’ll do it again.”…