French 'Terrorist' - "he's not my boyfriend"

[AbeSaidYes]

I wondered how other people were feeling about Hasna Aitboulahcen, the woman who was wearing a suicide vest in the recent Paris Siege?

I have just seen that she had shouted 'he's not my boyfriend' in response to the security forces and also I have read that she called 'help me' before the bomb went off.

It seems to me that there is every chance she was an unwilling victim of this atrocity - does anyone else feel the same? it just doesn't sit right with me.

Sorry Elendon. My iPad shortened ..

"Or able to surmise she was a willing terrorist given the french authorities are not even speculating on her role at the moment."

Someone's briefing the international press that she was also implicated in a plot to attack Charles de Gaulle airport.

No worries Caprin. in the memory of those poor women.

MrsMims I don't believe it's right to speculate upon her innocence based purely on her sex. We know that people of both sexes have had suicide vests strapped onto their bodies and been forced or coerced into detonating them (including children). Equally both men and women have been radicalised. To turn this tragedy into a feminist debate seems a bit distasteful to me.

Hi all,
This thread was reported quite a few times but, especially given the breaking news about the third person detonating the vest, we intend to leave it.

Well said Mrs Mims, my sentiments exactly.

Thank you.

I did want to say that even though she wasn't wearing the vest that it still doesn't mean she wasn't a willing part of it.but it does raise the possibility that it wasn't suicide terrorism.

However, Ottothedog up thread put it a lot better than me RE the press surrounding this and the need to produce salacious headlines about female suicide bombers.

To turn this tragedy into a feminist debate seems a bit distasteful to me.

You should re-think that phrase. Almost everything that is worth turning into a feminist debate is a tragedy. Female genital mutilation? Tragedy. Rape? Tragedy. "Honour" killings? Tragedy.

This is a way of silencing feminist debate.

Well it turned out your post was relevant and thoughtful, OP.

I care passionately about feminist issues but for god's sake nobody knows what happened in that flat. That being the case, I stand by my comment.

MsMims my apologies.

Also breaking news, women given substantial compensation by Scotland Yard who had their integrity and dignity grossly violated.

howtotebuild The fact that the woman didn't detonate her vest doesn't prove or disprove anything.

I didn't say that, you did.

I found this Guardian article a very interesting read, explaining particular recruiting tactics male jihadis use to draw young Muslim women into terrorism:

Skyping With The Enemy: I went undercover as a Jihadi girlfriend

And also a thank you to AbeSaidYes for highlighting this. A very brave post given the circumstances.

What exactly are you saying then howtorebuild?

French sources are reporting that it didn't look like she was the one detonating the bomb.

She replied "He is not my boyfriend" because police asked "Where is your boyfriend?" when he disappeared from view.

If anyone is interested in reading a French source:

Un policier hurle « Il est où ton copain ? » et la femme répond deux fois « C’est pas mon copain » avant que ne résonne une détonation, laquelle n'était donc semble-t-il pas de son fait. From here.

That doesn't even mean the police were actually assuming they are in an established sexual relationship. In French, "copain" means friend as well as boyfriend.

Just wanted to comment on this from page 1:

It's incredibly unlike another person could detonate a suicide vest worn by a person who was an unwilling participant.

This point was made in obvious ignorance of the facts.

Toward the end of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the majority of the people wearing suicide vest attacking FoBs and guard posts were unwilling victims, often women and children, strapped into the vest and made to walk into places to be blown up remotely. By terrorists who were overwhelmingly men, who were far enough away not to be involved.

Many of the women had had threats made to family if they didn't comply, children were often disabled in some way. In one incident a child pushed a pram toward a checkpoint which was full of explosives to be remotely detonated. There were many incidents of children being told to walk up to a guard post and give them men something which were remotely detonated.

A Google search of vehicle borne IEDs will give you several hits from people, men and women, having their families kidnapped, their hands duck taped to the steering wheel and made to drive an explosives packed car into checkpoints to be remotely detonated.

Remote detonation of unwilling participants is a daily fact of life in some areas of the world. Many of the victims have been outspoken against the terrorists, or live lifestyles that the terrorists disapprove of.

All unwilling.

Friends of ours have been maimed and killed by unwilling participants having explosives strapped to them and remotely detonated. It is a tactic that was very successful for terrorists in recent conflicts for a time. It's an extension of a tactic used by PIRA during the troubles, so it's already happened on Western soil, so there is no reason to think that it won't happen again.

However, because people seem to enjoy reading what they want into people's posts on emotive topics, I will be explicit.

I do not know either way whether or not this woman was a willing or unwilling participant in the explosion and I am unwilling to speculate, as I am not privy to any intelligence to suggest one or the other

This post was simply to correct a rather silly comment from very early on in the thread with facts, not to get involved in being told that I am somehow defending a woman because she's a woman, despite that not being able to be inferred from the words I've typed

No wonder so few FWR regulars have commented.

I made that comment and it was said in the context of this situation and this situation alone. The woman in question was seen entering the flat with the other men. I can only assume she was content to be in their company. Nobody knows if the vest was remotely activated or detonated because of the impact of the other blast. Everything is pure speculation at the moment.

Suicide vests have been known to be detonated remotely.
Take those young girls kidnapped in Nigeria by Boko Haram.

No one in this thread has based her possible innocence purely or solely on her (sex) gender Pirate. There was much more to it than that, as stated in my first posts.

Fuck! Even putting it in bold doesn't stop you....

It was a stupid thing to say. It showed a breathtaking level of ignorance of the tactics terrorists use. Even if it was purely in the context of this incident, it was still ignorant of those facts.

If you assume that someone is happy to do something, you're speculating. My post was factual, yours haven't been.

And had this been a man, supposedly shouting the same things I may well have started a similar thread but perhaps not in this topic as it would not be a feminist issue.

Thanks Elendon, I don't consider myself brave as it seemed like a pertinent enough question to me. I was quite surprised by the first few responses I got and to be honest I found it quite difficult not to swear.

Of course we still don't know what the full facts are but it seems fairly clear that there's some serious doubt about it being a willing suicide, and she was not wearing a suicide vest.

"The woman in question was seen entering the flat with the other men. I can only assume she was content to be in their company"

Why would you assume that?