Belgian female suicide bomber: not a big surprise

Tuesday media outlets reported that Muriel Degauque, a Belgian female convert to Islam, died in a failed suicide attack against US forces in Iraq. Allegedly, the woman carried out the operation after her husband, a Moroccan-born radical, was killed by US Marines. While this is the first time that a European woman carries out a suicide operation, there have been several cases in the past indicating that many European women (both Muslim-born and converts) intended to follow a similar path. Interestingly, many of these cases are linked to Belgium:

1) Mohammed Reha, a Belgian citizen of Moroccan descent recently arrested in Morocco, revealed that the wives of many GICM members who are currenty on trial in Belgium contacted him seeking his help to carry out suicide attacks. Reha described his meeting with the wife of a detained GICM Belgian operative: "She told me that many Muslim women whose husbands were arrested in Belgium would like to become involved in Jihad, the holy war. She asked me to help them by finding someone to train them and supply them with explosives."

2) Last week Belgian magistrates began questioning Mourad Chabarou, one of the alleged GICM operatives currently on trial in Belgium. Chabarou is accused of having received orders for an attack (possibly against the Paris metro system) from Rabei Osman El Sayed Ahmed, aka Mohammed the Egyptian, one of the alleged masterminds of the March 11 Madrid bombings. Chabarou is also suspected of planning to travel to Iraq to carry out a suicide operation. In May 2004, Italian authorities intercepted a conversation between Ahmed and his young roommate. Ahmed’s words provide a chilling insight into al Qaeda’s future plans involving women:

"Do you remember the woman who I told you about, do you remember? Her name is Hotaf. I have bad news, she was discovered, but there will be the victory of Islam. I am sorry, there are other women, but I am sorry for Hotaf. Do you know how Mouattaf trained her? She already trained her with many medical products. If they throw a stick it blows away an American neighborhood...[inaudible] May peace be upon him [Mouattaf], may his soul rest in peace, but she [Hotaf] is not the first nor will she be the last, there is Fatiha, there is Amal, there is Palestine, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Kashmir, Pakistan, and Malaysia…you just have to warn them and they come. There is Amal, Hanan, you just have to warn them; I am sorry the tactic of the first one did not work, she was discovered; now we have Amal, she is ready…God is great"

3) Investigators believe that Mohammed Reha had close ties to Samir Azzouz, the "golden boy" of Holland's Hofstad group. In February 2005, the Dutch newspaper Volkskrant interviewed three women, Naima, Fatima, and Khadisja, who claimed to be members of the Hofstad group. The women were adamant in their determination to carry on the jihad that the men had begun. And as one of them observed—Naima, the wife of Mohammed el Murabit, a key Hofstad member—“If [Dutch member of Parliament] Hirsi Ali is murdered by a woman it would have a much larger impact.” “She will not escape her punishment: death,” Naima added. “Even if it takes ten years.” Confirming the important role played by females in the Hofstad group, when leading Hofstad group member Noureddine El Fathni was arrested in June 2005 in Amsterdam, he was accompanied by two women, his wife Soumaya S. and 26-year-old Dutch convert Martine van den Oever. The two women, who are close friends, are accused of being deeply involved in the group’s activities. At the moment of her arrest Martine van den Oever, who had converted to Islam in high school and had progressively radicalized, was found in possession of a farewell letter in which she asked her friend Soumaya S. to inform her mother in case she died or something happened to her.

4) The Belgian newspaper De Standaard reported that Belgian authorities arrested on Wednesday a married couple from Antwerp that intended to follow the example of Muriel Degauque and her husband and was about to leave for Iraq.

Given these premises, it might be just a matter of time before a woman will carry out an attack in Europe.