Suicide bomber a bubbly ‘cowgirl’
‘I never saw her open the Qur’an,’ brother says
To her friends and neighbours she was the bubbly, outgoing woman who liked wearing large cowboy hats.
But on Wednesday it became clear there was a far darker side to Hasna Aitboulahcen, when she achieved the dubious distinction of becoming Europe’s first female suicide bomber.
The 26-year-old blew herself up as police stormed the flat where she was holed up with six fellow terrorists. The other terrorist killed in the siege was thought to be her cousin Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the ringleader of last Friday’s attacks in Paris that left 129 dead.
Shortly after 6 a.m., as elite police and soldiers surrounded the flat in the Paris suburb of SaintDenis, Aitboulahcen appeared at a window, shouting “help me, help me,” perhaps to lure officers in. She is reported to have been the first to open fire, using a Kalashnikov assault rifle.
The police tried to talk to Aitboulahcen, asking her: “Where’s your boyfriend?”
“He’s not my boyfriend!” she screamed in reply. Seconds later, she detonated a suicide vest, killing herself and causing the floor of the apartment to collapse.
Aitboulahcen’s death, and the role she appears to have played in the terror cell, has shocked those who knew her.
Her brother, Youssouf Aitboulahcen, said she had no interest in religion and started wearing a veil only a month ago.
“She spent her time criticizing everything,” he said. “She was living in her own world. I never saw her open the Qur’an. She was permanently on her phone, looking at Facebook or WhatsApp.“I told her to stop all of this, but she would not listen. She ignored my numerous attempts to give her advice.”
Three weeks ago, Aitboulahcen left her mother’s home to live with a female friend in Drancy, a suburb of northeast Paris. Then on Sunday, two days after the attacks, she phoned her brother at 7 p.m.
“She sounded like she had given up on life,” her brother said. He drove over to check on her but got no answer.
“She called me and I put the phone down on her after getting me to come over for nothing.
“Finally on Wednesday morning I turned on the TV and I learned that she had killed herself, sacrificing the life that the Lord had given.
“From the age of five she was taken into care, so she grew up with a foster family. She was happy and she flourished. Then as she grew up she went off the rails. She became reckless, running away and choosing bad company.”
One neighbour, who identified himself only as Hassane, described her as a tomboy, always dressed in jeans, sneakers and a black cap, until about eight months ago, when she adopted the niqab.
“She wasn’t scared of anyone,” Hassane said. “She was like a little soldier. She was very lively, very dynamic.”
The retired 62-year-old said Aitboulahcen was always very helpful and had once carried his heavy shopping for him.
“I can’t believe she’s part of this sect,” Hassane said. “When I heard it I felt sick. She was like all young girls — it was who she was hanging out with.”
Others described her as an extrovert who drank alcohol and was nicknamed “the cowgirl” for her habit of wearing cowboy hats. But it is now clear that she also became deeply radicalized. On her Facebook page, seen by the Belgian news website DH.be, she is pictured wearing a niqab and brandishing firearms.
She also wrote messages praising Hayat Boumeddiene — the wife of Amedy Coulibaly, who attacked a Jewish supermarket in Paris last January — who fled to Syria.
After trying unsuccessfully to travel to Syria herself, Aitboulahcen “offered her services to commit terrorist attacks in France,” according to police sources. At around the same time she was placed under “triple surveillance” by French intelligence, judges and police for drug-running and terror activities.
Aitboulahcen’s Moroccan family arrived in France in 1973 and settled in Paris, where she was born in 1989, in the suburb of Clichy-laGarenne. Her father, 75, had separated from her mother and moved to Morocco six months ago.