Female Belgian Bomber in Iraq Marks Grim First

An Islamic extremist from Belgium has achieved a grim milestone by becoming the first female European convert to commit a suicide bombing in Iraq, police said Wednesday after arresting 15 suspects linked to the woman in Belgium and France.

The 36-year-old woman died Nov. 9 in the car bombing of a U.S. military convoy after traveling with her Moroccan-born husband to Iraq to join other foreign fighters in a network led by militant kingpin Abu Musab Zarqawi, investigators said. No troops were killed in the attack.

Investigators said the incident illustrated the growing role of converts and women in Europe’s increasingly fierce and violent Islamic networks. It also apparently is the first suicide bombing anywhere by a female Islamic convert of European descent, European and U.S. investigators said. Women in European networks have generally been relegated to ideological activity and logistics.

“This is a scary group,” a veteran Belgian investigator said. “You have people who committed bombings, who helped recruit and send bombers, at least one who fought in Iraq and returned. And you have this couple who went to Iraq to die. Before they left they planned everything, prepared everything here knowing they would not return.”

The suicide bombing north of Baghdad accelerated cooperation between U.S. authorities and Belgian police, whose intercepts of phone conversations between suspects in Belgium and Iraq helped U.S. troops track down a cell of foreign fighters preparing additional attacks, investigators told The Times. In an assault on a hide-out in the Fallouja area a few days after the bombing, U.S. troops killed the husband, who was found wearing an explosives-rigged vest, and four other militants, Belgian authorities said.

“He was killed by American soldiers,” said Glen Audenart, director of Belgium’s federal police, during a news conference at which he announced the arrests of 14 suspects in Brussels, Antwerp, Charleroi and Tongeren. In addition, French police arrested a 27-year-old Tunisian, a suspected associate of the bomber’s husband, in an industrial suburb north of Paris on Wednesday.

The raids culminated a four-month Belgian investigation of the network. American authorities joined the effort as investigators detected plots underway against U.S.-led forces in Iraq.

“It was primarily a Belgian investigation,” a U.S. official said. “The main reason we got involved was because of the targeting of U.S. forces.”

The suspects arrested in Europe include another Belgian convert and a mix of Moroccans, Tunisians and Belgians of North African descent, including a married couple in Antwerp who were allegedly about to leave for Iraq. Wiretaps of the couple’s fervent conversations led investigators to believe they were eager to emulate the slain husband-and-wife jihadis.

“The conversations showed they were really fired up, ready for action,” the Belgian investigator said. “When they heard that the woman had died in the bombing in Iraq, it was a big celebration in Belgium.”

Authorities declined to identify the dead bomber or her husband because the investigation was ongoing in Europe and Iraq. But police said the woman was born in Charleroi, a small city in southern Belgium, and converted to Islam about 15 years ago when she married her husband, investigators said.

The couple lived in the Skaarbeck neighborhood of Brussels, an area with a large Muslim immigrant population, and they apparently had at least one child, an investigator said. They traveled to Turkey recently, dispatched by operatives in Belgium who had already sent two extremists to Iraq, one of whom returned and the other who is thought to still be there, though his fate is unclear.

The couple drove into Iraq from Turkey and joined Zarqawi’s forces near Fallouja, authorities said. On Nov. 9, the woman drove in a bomb-laden car that veered from a northbound lane to attack a southbound military convoy on a highway near a base called Camp Taji, U.S. officials said. The explosion killed her but caused only minor injuries to a U.S. soldier.

Further attacks were prevented because of the Belgian-U.S. cooperation that resulted in the Fallouja-area raid, American and Belgian officials said. In addition to those killed in the raid, four foreign fighters were captured.

“Of course we alerted the Americans when we detected potential attacks,” the Belgian investigator said. “We worked together quite well. And they were able to neutralize the cell.”

There have been several Arab women involved in suicide bombing missions, most recently an Iraqi who was captured after her explosives failed to ignite in an attack on hotels in Amman, Jordan, also on Nov. 9. Three other suicide bombers in that mission were successful, killing themselves and 58 other people.

The spread of Islamic radicalism in Europe has swept up more and more teenagers, women and converts from non-Muslim backgrounds. Whether European or Arab, the women tend to be wives of extremists.

“Until now, the wives shared the ideological convictions of their husbands, supported their activities and knew a lot about what was going on,” a French intelligence official said. “But you generally did not see them crossing the line into violence.”

European converts are prized by terrorist networks and feared by police because of their symbolic value and because their passports and backgrounds draw less suspicion.