Good news from Iraq, hopefully this will bring an end to (or at least bring down the numbers of) women blowing themselves up for allah.

‘Female suicide bomb recruiter’ Samira Ahmed Jassim captured

A middle-aged woman suspected of recruiting more than 80 female suicide bombers has been arrested by Iraqi forces, a senior officer said today.

Samira Ahmed Jassim, 51, confessed to dispatching 28 of the women to carry out attacks, said Major-General Qassim al-Moussawi, a Baghdad security spokesman. She was captured at an undisclosed location a fortnight ago.

He played a video of the apparent confession at a news conference.

Jassim, dressed in traditional, black Islamic robes, is shown appearing to confess to recruiting and training women to become human bombs.

She also described how she would escort the women to an orchard for insurgent training. Finally she spoke of how she would lead them to their targets.

In the separate prison interview with The Associated Press — with interrogators nearby — Jassim alleged that she helped plan the rapes of young women and then step in to persuade the victims to become suicide bombers as their only escape from the shame.

The AP was allowed access on condition the information would not be released until the formal announcement of the arrest.

Major-General Moussawi said that Jassim was a member of Ansar al-Sunna, a Sunni Arab militant group.

“Our intelligence information and tips from residents showed she directly supervised training of more than 80 female terrorists in Baghdad and Diyala,” he told reporters. Diyala, a volatile province northeast of the capital, has been worst hit by a spike in female suicide attacks in Iraq over the past year.

Jassim, nicknamed Um al-Mumenin (the mother of the believers), is heard in the video apparently confessing to training a female bomber who attacked a police station in Diyala.

“I was introduced to her, I began talking to her,” she said. Much of the audio was difficult to hear when played back at the news conference.

The Iraqi General said: “She confessed to training more than 28 female suicide bombers, all of whom conducted operations in different parts of Iraq.”

In the video, Jassim is heard saying that she had to talk to one elderly woman several times before persuading her to blow herself up at a bus station.

In addition, she spent a fortnight recruiting another woman who was a teacher and had problems with her husband and his family, according to the confession. This woman also went on to blow herself up.

Al-Qaeda and other insurgent groups are accused of deploying female suicide bombers because they are hard to detect at the many checkpoints in Iraq, which are typically manned by male guards who only frisk men.

It is also easy to conceal explosives under the black robes worn by many women. At least 36 female suicide bombers attempted or successfully carried out 32 suicide attacks last year, compared with eight in 2007, according to US military data.

First thing I asked myself when reading this, was “What kind of sick human being would pressure people into doing this?”, followed by “What kind of imbecile would go along with it, and blow themselves up!?!?”, followed by me remembering we are talking about islam. Then I feel stupid for even asking.

Related posts:

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2. Iraq: Number of children used as suicide bombers increasing
3. Iraq: Al-Qaeda 'used 24 child suicide bombers in last two years
4. Love, blackmail and rape – how al-Qaeda grooms women as ‘perfect weapons’
5. Iraqi Officials Say Female Homicide Bomber Kills 11, Injures 19