AIBU to feel really sorry for the wife of the terror suspect in France?

[PacificDogwood]

My French is not up to much, but the poor woman sounds distraught and beside herself.

I have no idea what he thought he was up to, but my heart goes out to her.

Condolences to those who lost a love one today; in France and elsewhere.

And trust me, if dh got arrested for chopping a someone's head off , I would not be doing interviews talking about how wonderful he was knowing the victims families are out there.

Gemavue, so you are saying that no families of extremists are unaware?

Nobody I would say they are very few and far between. Especially since these communities tend to be close knit. Everyone knows who their children, brothers, wives etc are in touch with. There is also changes in behaviour, comings and goings, voicing certain views that hint at it. Most will have an idea.

Just as the father mentioned above said his dd went to a wedding in Turkey , but he wasn't sure whose wedding it was. Total lie, no way would a young muslim girl leave the country to go to wedding, alone, if they didn't know whose it was

I'm sure it was right that she was arrested for questioning as she may know something or even be involved.

NRomanoff, I was not discounting your experience (seeing that I did not know about it), please discount mine.

I have no idea how I'd react if I were asked to comment on my DH having committed an atrocity like that. I don't see how anybody can tbh.

don't discount mine

Apologies op , I wasn't talking about you. I see why you thought that I that's not what I was saying.

I was talking to all the people who seem to think extremists exist in a vacuum

Ah, ok, apologies

And no, of course extremists don't exist in a vacuum - I find the idea of putting various attacks down to 'mad loners' really dangerous and not taking in to account the much wider issues (same goes for the attacker in the Charleston shootings).

Gemavue, so you are saying that no families of extremists are unaware?

So far, the evidence is that that is the case.

The teenage suicide bomber a few weeks ago? Well, his best friend next door just happened to be a convicted terrorist's younger bother, and the convicted terrorist was living in the house. Abase we've done. Another one of that trio was the daughter of a known extremist who was avoided by other parents. So I'm not saying "no families of extremists are unaware", I'm saying "so far, every case has had families who either knew or were wilfully avoiding knowing".

I heard the interview and must say, had my husband been arrested for beheading his boss and attempting to cause a huge (suicidal?) explosion, I don't think appearing on local radio would be top of my action list.

Exactly, in charleston the attackers friends came forward and said he had planned to do it at a school. I saw the interview whilst being mistimed that these people knew he was planning something but did not do anything.

That BBC article AuntieStella linked to about Sonia Sutcliffe's libel win against Private Eye has been very neatly written.

Here it is again to save anyone scrolling back

It's an on-this-day retrospective.

Note the side bar that talks about the drastic reduction in her damages and the linking with Jeffrey Archer's case against the News Of The World and The Daily Star.

He initially won over £1 million damages.

He was eventually sent to prison for lying at the trial. He was a very popular person at the time and probably remains so. Another one I can think of is perjurer Jonathan Aitken wielding his Mighty Sword of Truth against The Guardian.

Juries were eventually prevented from setting the damages at libel trials because they had a tendency to award bingo money to people that they liked in the witness box, especially if they were amusing novelists or much-loved soap characters such Ken Barlow.

I have no idea what Sonia Sutcliffe knew or didn't. Just as I have no idea about the wife of the man who murdered and desecrated the body of an innocent man in Lyon yesterday.

But it's right that she should be interviewed by the police and practical that her children are taken into care, at least until it's proven to be safe to release them into the care of their wider family.

It's also perfectly obvious that she is getting attention from the media. She and the children may well need police custody to protect them from that attention and revenge reprisals caused by her husband's actions.

I wonder why her husband didn't think he'd need to get them to a safe place before he did what he did.

It's also worth pointing out that she didn't sue claiming she didn't know, she sued denying that she had done deals with newspapers. The issue of what she did and didn't know during the time that her husband was an active serial killer was never debated in court.

YY Gemauve. The case was as carefully argued as the retrospective was written.

I'll reserve judgement until the facts are known. If she didn't know anything then I do feel sorry for her. There isn't a finite amount of sympathy that has to be reserved for the victims-who do have my full sympathy.
If she was at all complicit I don't have any sympathy for her at all.
It must be a dreadful thing though for a member of your family to commit an horrific crime if you really didn't know. The shame and distress must be overwhelming.
Lets wait till the facts come out and not rush to judgement.
Sometimes people can put on a very good show of distress but we just don't know the facts yet.

I do find it a bit baffling that on a day of three terrorist atrocities across the world, which result in the loss of dozens of innocent civilian lives - OP takes the time to post an expression of sympathy, not for the deceased or their relatives, but to the wife of one of the suspects.

The wife whose involvement or non involvement in her husband's attack none of us know as of yet.

I do find it a bit baffling that on a day of three terrorist atrocities across the world, which result in the loss of dozens of innocent civilian lives - OP takes the time to post an expression of sympathy, not for the deceased or their relatives, but to the wife of one of the suspects.

That is untrue and unfair Pumpkinpositive

I might not agree with PacificDogwood but she expressed condolences to the victims and their families in her OP and I have no reason to believe she wasn't genuine.

Do you want to go back and read it?

Perhaps when you've done that you might think about apologising to her.

So, the killer's wife has been released, and it looks like this may have been a crime of personal vengeance committed by a nutter rather than terrorism.

Yes there does look to be more to this than initially met the eye.

Well doesn't it depend if she knew or not? The fact that she's been arrested doesn't tell us anything - innocent until proven guilty.

We can't necessarily assume that just because she was his wife she knew exactly what he was up to - even wives can't make windows into men's souls, as they say. People can be very good at hiding things: for example if a husband is capable of hiding an affair and in some cases a whole secret second family, then surely he could've hidden his terrorist leanings and his plans to do what he did?

If she was indeed in the dark, then we should feel as sorry for her as we do for the wife or loved ones of the man who was murdered. She, too, has been widowed due to an act of terrorism.

"“We don’t know whether we’re dealing with a fundamentalist who flipped or a real terrorist,” one source close to the investigation told Reuters. “Investigators are wondering whether this isn’t just a simple criminal act.”

www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/28/french-beheading-attack-suspect-confesses-murder

Which is precisely why I was arguing that we need to be circumspect in such cases and wait for the dust to settle before claiming that his wife knew all about it.