They collect money, provide information, provide logistical facilities, push their husbands to fight and commit crimes. Jihadist wives - they play a behind-the-scenes role in the preparation of terrorist attacks by Muslim fundamentalists. And soon they themselves will replace the spouses in the fight for true faith.
In 2010, French police arrested two Muslims suspected of having contacts with terrorists. Together with them, their wives, Izzana Kouachi and Hayat Boumeddiene, were arrested. The women were questioned but consistently claimed that they knew nothing about their husbands' friendships, were not interested in their affairs, and that they would not answer questions because they felt unwell and needed rest. Therefore, no charges could be brought against the women. They were both released after three days of arrest.
For five years, the police had no interest in either Izzana Kouachi or Hayat Boumeddiene. Until the day of the attack on the editorial office of Charlie Hebdo, followed by the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in Paris. It was then surprising to discover that while no direct contact was recorded between their terrorist husbands, the two women called each other ... 453 times in five months. It became obvious that they played the role of liaison officers.
Women? They do not play any role…
Initially, the French investigators did not deal with the women of the prosecuted terrorists. "They do not play any role, they are completely sidelined" - quotes one of the representatives of the French services Matthieu Suc, who in his recently published book Jihadist Wives decided to verify this preview.
A street full of police forces in front of Charlie Hebdo on the day of the bombing.
The former head of the DCRI, or French counterintelligence, Bernard Squarcini, initially also believed that the wives of Muslim terrorists were not involved in the preparation and organization of the attacks. He honestly confessed:
(...) we were only interested in men, we didn't pay attention to them. I have known situations when a woman stayed with children and continued to receive social benefits, while the man was going to conduct jihad. Simply put, women were not our priority. They posed no threat and were not prosecuted by law .
Only gradually, working out the support network and the logistics of the bombers, did the investigators realize what role the spouses hidden behind niqabs (Muslim scarves) could play.
Good Muslim wife
On January 7, 2015, two men dressed in black and armed burst into the editorial office of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. Shouting "Allahu akbar" they opened fire, killing twelve without mercy. A day later, another bomber started shooting at the policemen, fatally wounding the officer. Then, on January 9, he broke into the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in the suburbs of Paris and murdered four people.
After the attacks, the French police immediately launched an investigation, trying to identify the initiators and organizers of both actions. The milieus of Islamic fundamentalists was checked, links between Muslims suspected of terrorism were investigated, contacts, meetings and information flows were checked.
Investigators found a man named Thamer Bouchnak, a 27-year-old highly religious taxi driver of Tunisian origin. Bouchnak had ties to individuals implicated in terrorism. He used his young wife Sondes for his suspicious activities. First, she had to buy a cell phone in her maiden name, which was actually intended for him. Then one of her husband's acquaintances made a check for her, which Thamer was about to collect.
Soon Izzana, the wife of another jihadist Chérif, sent Sondes a text message to Thamer. The woman, however, was not aware of the purpose for which she performs all activities. Nevertheless, as a good Muslim wife, she humbly followed orders.
Brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi. As it turned out, the bombers could communicate with each other thanks to the mediation of women.
Izzana is passing the news
Thamer's friend was Chérif Kouachi, the son of Algerian immigrants. His parents died when he was still a child. He worked at a fish stand in one of the Parisian supermarkets. At one point he turned to religion and became a devout Islamist. His religious and political views were shared by his wife, Izzana Kouachi. Together, they watched material on Islam, speeches by Al Qaeda leaders and messages from suicide terrorists. They were reading the book Soldiers of Light Maliki el-Aroud, the wife of one of the killers of the famous Afghan commander Ahmad Shah Masud, who conveyed a radical message to Muslim women.
In January 2009, Izzana acted as an intermediary in sending messages summoning Muslims to a demonstration outside the Bataclan Theater in Paris to prevent a charity gala for Magavu, the Israeli border police. "Sometimes Chérif used Izzana to schedule an appointment that he wanted to keep secret: Call Dolly's wife to make him call me , he asked, ”we read in the book Jihadist Wives . It all served one purpose - to prepare the coup.
On Wednesday, January 7, 2015, Chérif's brother, Said, came to Kouachich's apartment. Izzans said they were going to the stores for a discount. In fact, they went to the editorial office of Charlie Hebdo to carry out the attack. Chérif and Said, wearing balaclavas, dressed in black and armed with AK rifles, entered the building at ul. Nicolas-Appert 10, and then by using weapons to terrorize one of the cartoonists who came out for a cigarette, they got into the editorial office. There they shot people they met. Then they reached the council room where the Wednesday weekly editorial meeting was currently taking place. They stood in the doorway and opened fire on the crowd. They killed 12 people in total.
Stéphane Charbonnier, one of the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo, who was killed in the attack. Photo from 2009.
Shots in the street
On the morning of Thursday, January 8, 2015 in Montrouge near Paris, two employees responsible for the city's cleanliness were chatting in the street with two city police officers. At one point a large black man with a backpack walked past them. The passerby scowled at them and walked on. After a while, however, he turned back, took a submachine gun from under his jacket and began firing.
A young policewoman from Martnika, Clarissa Jean-Philippe, was hit with a bullet in an artery and collapsed onto the pavement. One of the city workers was hit on the cheek. The second attacked the attacker, trying to tear his weapon away. After a short struggle, the bomber hit him with the butt of a pistol and then walked away with a steady pace. Clarissa Jean-Philippe was taken to hospital and died. She was 26 years old. She had been in the police force for two weeks.
A more radical wife
The Montrouge bomber was Amedy Coulibaly. He came from a large Malian family and was at odds with the law from an early age. He was removed from junior high for a fight with a knife. He then served many times for the theft and drug trafficking. A juvenile court sentenced him to six years in prison for a robbery in 2002. After his sentence, he met Hayat Boumeddiene, 21, whom he soon married.
Hayat had Algerian roots and grew up in a foster family. Her mother died early and her father remarried. The girl could not communicate with her stepmother and was put up for adoption. It affected her psyche. She was conflicted, constantly getting into fights. She beat up a teacher and a policewoman. After her marriage to Coulibale, she calmed down, and they both turned to religion and practiced rigorous Islam.
Hayat promoted jihad on the internet. She enrolled in a martial arts course. Amedy, on the other hand, was friends with Islamic radicals. Together with them, he discussed religion, practiced physical form and mastered the use of weapons. It soon turned out that Hayat had a possessive and dominant character. The book quoted in the book Wives of Jihadists fits her perfectly. statement by one follower of Islamism:
My wife is more radical than I am. Ideologically, she is the boss. She's pushing me. Anyway, I converted for her .
It was Hayat who bought an Austin mini for 12,000 euros, which she then handed over to a Turkish, living in Charleroi, Belgium, dealing in arms smuggling. In return, he was to provide Coulibaly with the weapons and explosives needed for the attack. She withdrew money from her bank account and gave it to her husband when he needed cash to buy ammunition or support other jihadists.
Flowers outside the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket where Coulibaly terrorized the customers and service.
The day after the attack in Montrouge, Coulibaly broke into a kosher Jewish Hyper Cacher supermarket near Paris, shot four people and took hostages. He died during an assault by special forces. Hayat fled to Syria and joined the forces of the Islamic State. Until now, she has not been captured.
Now they!
These are just three of the dozen or so cases of jihadist wives involved in the preparation of the attacks and described in Matthieu Suca's book Jihadist Wives . Some of them were unconscious helpers of their husbands, others were willing to help them, and were even more radical than they were. The support given to jihadists by their wives is a broader phenomenon. According to the Europol report on terrorism published in June 2017, the reason for the increasing effectiveness of attacks is, among other things, the fact that women are being used more and more in the actions. In 2015, they accounted for 18 percent of those arrested, and in 2016 - as many as 26.
Akcakale and Tell Abyad. This is where Hayat was last seen before her disappearance.
For now, the burden of the attacks is taken by men, while women are involved in raising funds, provide logistical assistance and act as couriers when traveling from Western Europe to the Middle East. They are perfect for this role because they attract less attention from the security services than young men. However, analysts say, it is only a matter of time before the jihadists also take the burden of carrying out the attacks in Europe, especially in France. It can already be seen that their role is slowly ceasing to be limited only to auxiliary activities. Muslim women emerge from the shadow of their husbands. The time of the jihadists is coming.
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Their names are Izzana, Diane, Sumja and they shared their lives with terrorists. The media and police have long ignored these women, considering them to be victims cut off from the world by a veil, but today they have become the only chance to understand the world of jihadists.
All these women - converts, emigrants or the highest French aristocracy, are united by the fact that hidden under the niqab, they saw men radicalize and armor themselves.
The extraordinary book "Wives of Jihadists" is about them.