ianstone
06-20-2010, 09:37 AM
Islam’s sisters of sacrifice
Videos made by the widows who became suicide bombers on the Moscow metro give a chilling insight into the radicalisation of women
Mark Franchetti
Published: 20 Haziran 2010
Sitting on a carpet beside an AK-47 automatic rifle, her face concealed behind a black veil, Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova calmly addresses the shaky video camera. Her message is chilling.
In a soft voice, broken only once by a heavy sigh, the 17-year-old tells how she has sealed a pact with Allah in return for a place in heaven. “I have decided to fulfil my pledge,” she says. “God willing, I will become a martyr.”
Four days later Abdurakhmanova caught an early-morning train on the Moscow metro, more than 1,000 miles from her native Dagestan in Russia’s Caucasus region.
Strapped to her waist was more than 4lb of explosive packed with metal bolts and screws. At a station in central Moscow she detonated the charge. The blast killed 14 commuters and wounded dozens more. She was decapitated.
A second video, shot in the same place, shows another veiled woman who was identified by the security sources as Maryam Sharipova.
On the day that Abdurakhmanova set off her bomb in March, Sharipova, a 28-year-old teacher from Dagestan, killed 26 people by blowing herself up at Moscow’s Lubyanka metro station. More than 100 were injured in the two explosions, the first such attack in the capital for six years.
The videos, obtained by The Sunday Times, provide fresh insights into the indoctrinated minds of the two bombers. Both repeatedly call on other women to turn themselves into human bombs.
“Sisters, I make this statement to open your eyes,” said Abdurakhmanova in her video. “If you really want to help Allah then follow in the footsteps of other women who have sacrificed themselves.
“To those who will call me a terrorist and a shahid [martyr], I say, ‘Yes, I am a terrorist. Yes, I am a shahid’. Because I will bring terror to the infidels and can say with pride that I chose death while you chose life.”
Sources in Dagestan say Abdurakhmanova’s transformation from an ordinary teenager to a deadly fanatic began at the age of 15 when she met Umalat Magomedov on the internet. Fourteen years older than her, Magomedov was a militant who carried out attacks on Russian forces in Dagestan, which borders Chechnya and has become a hotbed of Islamic militancy in recent years.
Abdurakhmanova not only married him but also adopted his radical views. In one photograph released after the bombing, she brandishes a pistol and a hand grenade.
Last December Magomedov was killed by security forces. “He was shot in the chest and then executed at point-blank range with a bullet to the head,” said his mother Alla, who keeps a picture of his shattered skull on her mobile phone.
His death appears to have pushed Abdurakhmanova over the edge. Police sources said she would have come under intense psychological pressure from Magomedov’s fellow radicals. “Women like her are brainwashed and used as cannon fodder,” said a counterterrorism officer.
In the video Abdurakhmanova refers to her husband, saying she has nothing left except her own life. She goes on to chastise fellow Muslim women for failing to take a stand against the Russians.
“Sisters,” she said, “how can you sit back when the infidels force their laws onto us, when they take up arms against Allah and when they torture our men? Come out and give up your souls.”
In the second video, which has been posted on an obscure Islamist website, Sharipova appears less self-assured than her younger compatriot. She sighs heavily and loses her train of thought and sounds more resigned than inspired. She describes her course of action as “heavy and difficult” but then, like Abdurakhmanova, calls on other women to follow her example.
A maths teacher at a school in Balakhani, a remote mountain village, Sharipova lived with her parents Rasul and Patimat, who teach Russian literature and biology respectively.
As the war against Islamic insurgents began to spread from Chechnya into Dagestan, Balakhani, a fervently religious village, was regularly raided by police. Both of Sharipova’s brothers were accused of supporting the rebels, a claim her parents deny. The brothers are now being hunted by police.
Sharipova began to wear a hijab headscarf. A few weeks before the bombings, Russian security officers told her father that she had secretly married Magomedali Vagabov, a wanted terrorist leader.
“I asked my daughter if it was true but she said she didn’t have any connection with the underground resistance and would never marry without my consent,” he said. Investigators believe it was under Vagabov’s influence that Sharipova agreed to blow herself up.
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/multimedia/archive/00014/580-chechnya_14480a.jpgDzhanet Abdurakhmanova with her husband Umalat Magomedov In a remarkable coincidence Dmitry Beliakov, a Sunday Times photographer, had stayed with Sharipova and her parents during a trip to Dagestan only three weeks before the bombings. “She wore the hijab and her first question to me was, ‘Which religion do you follow?’ ” said Beliakov.
“When I replied Orthodox, she tried to talk me into converting to Islam. But she did not come across as a radical. She was educated, softly spoken and polite and she gracefully accepted a box of chocolates I gave her as a small gesture of gratitude for cooking me dinner.”
Beliakov asked to photograph Sharipova but was not granted permission by her father. Beliakov did not realise he had stayed with one of the bombers until he returned to the village after the attacks.
“I was taken to the home of one of the bombers to meet her father and found myself in front of Rasul,” said Beliakov. “I couldn’t believe it. What shocked me most was how normal and peaceful she had seemed.”
Sharipova’s mother recalled how she had last seen her daughter alive on March 28, the day before the bombings. They had travelled together to Makhachkala, the regional capital. “We were in a shop when Maryam said to me, ‘Mama, wait for me. I’m going to buy some henna and I’ll be back in 10 minutes.’ Then she called me from someone else’s mobile and said she was off to see a friend. I never saw her again.”
Sharipova’s family had identified her when Rasul was shown a photograph of his daughter’s decapitated head after the blasts.
Additional reporting: Dmitry Beliakov
Sitting on a carpet beside an AK-47 automatic rifle, her face concealed behind a black veil, Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova calmly addresses the shaky video camera. Her message is chilling.
In a soft voice, broken only once by a heavy sigh, the 17-year-old tells how she has sealed a pact with Allah in return for a place in heaven. “I have decided to fulfil my pledge,” she says. “God willing, I will become a martyr.”
am’s sisters of sacrifice
Videos made by the widows who became suicide bombers on the Moscow metro give a chilling insight into the radicalisation of women
Mark Franchetti
Published: 20 Haziran 2010
Sitting on a carpet beside an AK-47 automatic rifle, her face concealed behind a black veil, Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova calmly addresses the shaky video camera. Her message is chilling.
In a soft voice, broken only once by a heavy sigh, the 17-year-old tells how she has sealed a pact with Allah in return for a place in heaven. “I have decided to fulfil my pledge,” she says. “God willing, I will become a martyr.”
Four days later Abdurakhmanova caught an early-morning train on the Moscow metro, more than 1,000 miles from her native Dagestan in Russia’s Caucasus region.
Strapped to her waist was more than 4lb of explosive packed with metal bolts and screws. At a station in central Moscow she detonated the charge. The blast killed 14 commuters and wounded dozens more. She was decapitated.
A second video, shot in the same place, shows another veiled woman who was identified by the security sources as Maryam Sharipova.
On the day that Abdurakhmanova set off her bomb in March, Sharipova, a 28-year-old teacher from Dagestan, killed 26 people by blowing herself up at Moscow’s Lubyanka metro station. More than 100 were injured in the two explosions, the first such attack in the capital for six years.
The videos, obtained by The Sunday Times, provide fresh insights into the indoctrinated minds of the two bombers. Both repeatedly call on other women to turn themselves into human bombs.
“Sisters, I make this statement to open your eyes,” said Abdurakhmanova in her video. “If you really want to help Allah then follow in the footsteps of other women who have sacrificed themselves.
“To those who will call me a terrorist and a shahid [martyr], I say, ‘Yes, I am a terrorist. Yes, I am a shahid’. Because I will bring terror to the infidels and can say with pride that I chose death while you chose life.”
Sources in Dagestan say Abdurakhmanova’s transformation from an ordinary teenager to a deadly fanatic began at the age of 15 when she met Umalat Magomedov on the internet. Fourteen years older than her, Magomedov was a militant who carried out attacks on Russian forces in Dagestan, which borders Chechnya and has become a hotbed of Islamic militancy in recent years.
Abdurakhmanova not only married him but also adopted his radical views. In one photograph released after the bombing, she brandishes a pistol and a hand grenade.
Last December Magomedov was killed by security forces. “He was shot in the chest and then executed at point-blank range with a bullet to the head,” said his mother Alla, who keeps a picture of his shattered skull on her mobile phone.
His death appears to have pushed Abdurakhmanova over the edge. Police sources said she would have come under intense psychological pressure from Magomedov’s fellow radicals. “Women like her are brainwashed and used as cannon fodder,” said a counterterrorism officer.
In the video Abdurakhmanova refers to her husband, saying she has nothing left except her own life. She goes on to chastise fellow Muslim women for failing to take a stand against the Russians.
“Sisters,” she said, “how can you sit back when the infidels force their laws onto us, when they take up arms against Allah and when they torture our men? Come out and give up your souls.”
In the second video, which has been posted on an obscure Islamist website, Sharipova appears less self-assured than her younger compatriot. She sighs heavily and loses her train of thought and sounds more resigned than inspired. She describes her course of action as “heavy and difficult” but then, like Abdurakhmanova, calls on other women to follow her example.
A maths teacher at a school in Balakhani, a remote mountain village, Sharipova lived with her parents Rasul and Patimat, who teach Russian literature and biology respectively.
As the war against Islamic insurgents began to spread from Chechnya into Dagestan, Balakhani, a fervently religious village, was regularly raided by police. Both of Sharipova’s brothers were accused of supporting the rebels, a claim her parents deny. The brothers are now being hunted by police.
Sharipova began to wear a hijab headscarf. A few weeks before the bombings, Russian security officers told her father that she had secretly married Magomedali Vagabov, a wanted terrorist leader.
“I asked my daughter if it was true but she said she didn’t have any connection with the underground resistance and would never marry without my consent,” he said. Investigators believe it was under Vagabov’s influence that Sharipova agreed to blow herself up.
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/multimedia/archive/00014/580-chechnya_14480a.jpgDzhanet Abdurakhmanova with her husband Umalat Magomedov In a remarkable coincidence Dmitry Beliakov, a Sunday Times photographer, had stayed with Sharipova and her parents during a trip to Dagestan only three weeks before the bombings. “She wore the hijab and her first question to me was, ‘Which religion do you follow?’ ” said Beliakov.
“When I replied Orthodox, she tried to talk me into converting to Islam. But she did not come across as a radical. She was educated, softly spoken and polite and she gracefully accepted a box of chocolates I gave her as a small gesture of gratitude for cooking me dinner.”
Beliakov asked to photograph Sharipova but was not granted permission by her father. Beliakov did not realise he had stayed with one of the bombers until he returned to the village after the attacks.
“I was taken to the home of one of the bombers to meet her father and found myself in front of Rasul,” said Beliakov. “I couldn’t believe it. What shocked me most was how normal and peaceful she had seemed.”
Sharipova’s mother recalled how she had last seen her daughter alive on March 28, the day before the bombings. They had travelled together to Makhachkala, the regional capital. “We were in a shop when Maryam said to me, ‘Mama, wait for me. I’m going to buy some henna and I’ll be back in 10 minutes.’ Then she called me from someone else’s mobile and said she was off to see a friend. I never saw her again.”
Sharipova’s family had identified her when Rasul was shown a photograph of his daughter’s decapitated head after the blasts.
Additional reporting: Dmitry Beliakov
Sitting on a carpet beside an AK-47 automatic rifle, her face concealed behind a black veil, Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova calmly addresses the shaky video camera. Her message is chilling.
In a soft voice, broken only once by a heavy sigh, the 17-year-old tells how she has sealed a pact with Allah in return for a place in heaven. “I have decided to fulfil my pledge,” she says. “God willing, I will become a martyr.”
am’s sisters of sacrifice