A senior mental health nurse, described as a devout Catholic, has been permanently removed from the medical register after being convicted of helping to send money to support an ISIS terrorist in Syria.
From NHS Nurse to Terror Fundraiser
Stella Oyella, a Band 7 nurse in her fifties, was jailed for three years in March 2024 for arranging the availability of property for terrorism. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has now ruled that her actions breached a fundamental tenet of the profession, striking her off indefinitely.
The tribunal heard that Oyella, who qualified as a mental health nurse in August 2005, played an "active role" in a funding channel. She helped forward small sums of money from London to Uganda, which were then destined for Syria to support a man with a "violent extremist mindset." This man, identified only as Person 1, had left for Syria in September 2014 to take up arms for the Islamic State.
A Network of Family Funding
Oyella's daughter, Vanessa Atim, 32, was also convicted and sentenced to three years and nine months in prison for her part in the scheme. The court heard the pair sent five payments totalling more than £1,800 to Joshua Ogaba, a former computer programmer who was Oyella's brother and Atim's uncle.
Ogaba, a former Catholic altar boy from Finsbury Park, north London, converted to Islam in prison between 2004 and 2006 and became radicalised. After disappearing in 2014, he travelled to Syria, where he was eventually captured in 2019 and died in custody in 2022. Photographs recovered from his possessions showed him posing with machine guns, a motorbike, and homemade bombs alongside fellow ISIS fighters.
Despite defence claims that the women acted out of concern for a "desperate" relative, the sentencing judge at the Central Criminal Court stated they "chose to turn a blind eye" to the fact their money could support terrorist atrocities widely reported in the news.
Professional Consequences and Public Trust
Patricia Richardson, chair of the NMC panel, emphasised the gravity of the breach. "Nurses occupy a position of privilege and trust in society," she said. "The panel determined that the conduct... breached one of the fundamental tenets of the nursing profession and therefore brought its reputation into disrepute."
The panel noted that while the conduct occurred outside her clinical practice and no patients were directly harmed, the seriousness of the offence was not easily remediable. They highlighted a pattern of criminal behaviour and the judge's remark that Oyella had "yet fully to face up to [her] offending."
Oyella, who worked for the East London NHS Foundation Trust, was also ordered to pay a £170 victim surcharge and to register with the police for 10 years. Her daughter, a businesswoman and former Commonwealth Youth Leaders' Forum delegate, ran an enterprise called Pro Intern.
