Muriel Degauque, 38, from Charleroi, Belgium, is the name revealed by a Belgian paper of the first European woman to carry out a suicide attack in Iraq
She converted to Islam after marrying a radical Muslim. She killed no one but herself when she attacked a US military convoy south of Baghdad Nov. 9.
A Belgian passport was found on her body and papers showing she entered Iraq via Turkey. Fourteen accomplices of the Belgian woman bomber were arrested in Belgium this week.
They were of Belgian, Tunisian and Moroccan origin.
As part of the investigation into the Belgian terrorist network, the Paris police arrested a 27-year old Tunisian man Wednesday with alleged links to the Belgian cell
Earlier this month, the trial began of 13 Belgian and Moroccan nationals accused of providing logistics for an Islamic militant group which carried out the 2004 Madrid rail attacks in which 191 people died and the 2003 Casablanca bombings that killed 45. They were charged with supplying a safe house, false papers and logistical aid to the al Qaeda-linked Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group. Belgium has become a center for providing terrorists with fake Belgian passports.
In France, Tuesday, anti-terror police arrest 6 suspected radical Muslims and a Muslim prison chaplain suspected of association with “a terrorist enterprise.”
The detentions in western and central France tie in with a terror inquiry begun last May. The chaplain was detained at S. Malo, Brittany, when his bank account was found to contain large sums and he began attending a fundamentalist mosque.
Spain’s high court detained four people accused of financing an Islamic militant group linked to al Qaeda. Seven others from the group of 11 rounded up last week were freed on bail.