Would-Be Suicide Bomber Talks
We’ll probably never know whether 15-year-old Rania al Ambaki was the victim of a breathtakingly cruel conspiracy, or a willing woman terrorist.
The released by police poses more questions than it answers. So does the interview she gave to CBS News in the Baqouba jail where she is waiting for a court hearing.
We do know, however, that she's one of the 35 female suicide bombers who put on explosive vests this year alone. Last year there were eight. The year before, only four.
Rania's story is unique, however, because she lived to tell it.
In late August, a policeman in Baqouba, a town north of Baghdad, became suspicious when he noticed a young woman walking in an apparent daze toward his checkpoint.
He shouted at her to stop and crouch against a wall. Brave officers ran to handcuff her. The video shows pictures, startling in this conservative Muslim country, of the police peeling off her blouse to reveal the bomb.
Rania swears she didn’t know she was carrying explosives.
She told CBS News that Mohammed, her husband of only a few months, took her to his aunt’s house where he said he needed to borrow some money.
There, two women she didn’t recognize — Um Fatma and Hoda — dressed her in the heavy vest and bound it in place with bandages.
"Mohammed told me the two women were his cousins, and that the vest was a kind of medical device for back pain," she said. "Then they told me to go shopping in the market wearing the vest."
"As I left, Mohammed kissed me and said, 'When we meet in heaven, I hope you choose me as a husband again.'”
It beggars belief that Rania didn't realize she was a human bomb, especially as she was no stranger to the politics of extremism. Her own father had bombed a local funeral, and was in turn killed in revenge.
General Abdul Kareem Qasim, an operations chief with Iraq's Interior Ministry, interrogated Rania after her arrest. He acknowledges that her story is murky, but possible.
Rania is not very bright, says Qasim. Her family stopped sending her to school when she was 12, and she rarely left the poor farming community where they lived.
"This is the typical kind of girl al Qaeda in Iraq will use," he says, "with no power, and no experience of life."
Police think Rania may have been given — or chose to drink — drugged juice before she put on the vest, and that the plan was to detonate her remotely by cell phone when she was either in the checkpoint or the market.
She was probably saved because the police just happened to be jamming all cell phone signals in the area as part of another security operation
After Rania's arrest, she told police where to find her husband.
By the time CBS travelled to Baqouba, he was in jail, too. As you might expect, he denies plotting to blow up his 15-year-old bride.
In fact, Mohammed insisted he had not seen Rania for five months. She had left him, said Mohammed fighting back tears, and only implicated him in her crime because he wouldn’t give her a divorce.
But police told CBS Mohammed was suspected of links to al Qaeda in Iraq and had been arrested previously near the Syrian border, which is part of the main smuggling route for extremist fighters.
They also said there was evidence to show Rania’s own aunt was procuring vulnerable young women to groom as suicide bombers.
Rania al Ambaki said she didn’t want to kill anyone. If a judge believes her, she may be released after a relatively short time in jail.
But she has nowhere to go but home — to the rural, dirt poor area around Baqouba, rife with old feuds over land and slights to family honor. In this traditional society, women do as they’re told, revenge killings are common and law-enforcement spotty.
It's also a Sunni area where, according to police, a few radical clerics preach the message of violent holy war.
Baqouba remains fertile ground for extremists who want to destabilize the fragile Iraqi state with killing and terror. They’re specifically recruiting women "martyrs" because they’re less conspicuous, and seldom thoroughly searched at checkpoints.
"I won’t go back to my husband if I’m released from jail,” says Rania. "I’d like to go back and finish school. And I know I will have to be careful and clever and make sure I am not tricked again.”
Rania beat the odds once. She’ll have to be very lucky to do it again.
The released by police poses more questions than it answers. So does the interview she gave to CBS News in the Baqouba jail where she is waiting for a court hearing.
We do know, however, that she's one of the 35 female suicide bombers who put on explosive vests this year alone. Last year there were eight. The year before, only four.
Rania's story is unique, however, because she lived to tell it.
In late August, a policeman in Baqouba, a town north of Baghdad, became suspicious when he noticed a young woman walking in an apparent daze toward his checkpoint.
He shouted at her to stop and crouch against a wall. Brave officers ran to handcuff her. The video shows pictures, startling in this conservative Muslim country, of the police peeling off her blouse to reveal the bomb.
Rania swears she didn’t know she was carrying explosives.
She told CBS News that Mohammed, her husband of only a few months, took her to his aunt’s house where he said he needed to borrow some money.
There, two women she didn’t recognize — Um Fatma and Hoda — dressed her in the heavy vest and bound it in place with bandages.
"Mohammed told me the two women were his cousins, and that the vest was a kind of medical device for back pain," she said. "Then they told me to go shopping in the market wearing the vest."
"As I left, Mohammed kissed me and said, 'When we meet in heaven, I hope you choose me as a husband again.'”
It beggars belief that Rania didn't realize she was a human bomb, especially as she was no stranger to the politics of extremism. Her own father had bombed a local funeral, and was in turn killed in revenge.
(CBS/Iraqi Police)
General Abdul Kareem Qasim, an operations chief with Iraq's Interior Ministry, interrogated Rania after her arrest. He acknowledges that her story is murky, but possible.
Rania is not very bright, says Qasim. Her family stopped sending her to school when she was 12, and she rarely left the poor farming community where they lived.
"This is the typical kind of girl al Qaeda in Iraq will use," he says, "with no power, and no experience of life."
Police think Rania may have been given — or chose to drink — drugged juice before she put on the vest, and that the plan was to detonate her remotely by cell phone when she was either in the checkpoint or the market.
She was probably saved because the police just happened to be jamming all cell phone signals in the area as part of another security operation
After Rania's arrest, she told police where to find her husband.
By the time CBS travelled to Baqouba, he was in jail, too. As you might expect, he denies plotting to blow up his 15-year-old bride.
(CBS/Iraqi Police)
In fact, Mohammed insisted he had not seen Rania for five months. She had left him, said Mohammed fighting back tears, and only implicated him in her crime because he wouldn’t give her a divorce.
But police told CBS Mohammed was suspected of links to al Qaeda in Iraq and had been arrested previously near the Syrian border, which is part of the main smuggling route for extremist fighters.
They also said there was evidence to show Rania’s own aunt was procuring vulnerable young women to groom as suicide bombers.
Rania al Ambaki said she didn’t want to kill anyone. If a judge believes her, she may be released after a relatively short time in jail.
But she has nowhere to go but home — to the rural, dirt poor area around Baqouba, rife with old feuds over land and slights to family honor. In this traditional society, women do as they’re told, revenge killings are common and law-enforcement spotty.
It's also a Sunni area where, according to police, a few radical clerics preach the message of violent holy war.
Baqouba remains fertile ground for extremists who want to destabilize the fragile Iraqi state with killing and terror. They’re specifically recruiting women "martyrs" because they’re less conspicuous, and seldom thoroughly searched at checkpoints.
"I won’t go back to my husband if I’m released from jail,” says Rania. "I’d like to go back and finish school. And I know I will have to be careful and clever and make sure I am not tricked again.”
Rania beat the odds once. She’ll have to be very lucky to do it again.
