Alaa Abdullah Esayed, 22, of Kennington posted nearly 60 tweets a day in Arabic including graphic images and links to terrorist websites.

Her Twitter picture was of a woman in a burka with one finger raised and holding a Kalashnikov.

The scale of her tweeting between June 2013 and May 2014 (when her account was shut down) led al Qaida to list Iraqi-born Esayed’s profile as one of the 66 most important jihadi accounts.

Esayed also used Instagram to post photos of corpses and prisoners about to be beheaded.

The court heard Esayed was brought up in war-torn Mosul in Iraq and came to Britain with her family in 2007 after her military father was forced to flee the country.

Her lawyer Tanvir Qureshi admitted she was a “Twitter terrorist” but argued Esayed’s postings were just “propaganda”.

Jailing Esayed today, Judge Charles Wide said she was Tweeting material encouraging terrorism on a “massive scale”.

He told her: “An indication of how busy you were in this activity is that on a site associated with al Qaida your Twitter account was noted to be one of 66 important jihadist accounts.”

He added that she was inciting not just men but women and children to wage jihad, saying she asked women “to bring up their children in the belief that it is their duty to take up arms…and embrace martyrdom.”

Esayed was sentenced today at the Old Bailey to three-and-a-half years in prison.

She had previously pleaded guilty to encouragement of terrorism contrary to section 1(2) of the Terrorism Act 2006 and dissemination of terrorist publications contrary to section 2 (1)(a) of the Terrorism Act 2006 on 8 April 2015.

Commander Richard Walton, who leads the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, said:

“Terrorism will not be defeated until we silence those who inspire others to commit terrorist acts. We will prosecute anyone using the internet and social media in this way.”