>PORTRAIT OF THE ’BLACK WIDOW’
Bits of information have surfaced about Hayat Boumeddiene, who remains the most fascinating of the major players in this week’s terrorist scheme.
Like the Kouachis, she was all but orphaned early in life. One of seven children born in Villiers-sur-Marne to Algerian parents, she lost her mother at around age 8. She and several of her siblings were placed in foster care by their father, a delivery van driver, when he was unable to look after them.
There’s a big gap after that. But it’s known that Boumeddiene became romantically involved with Coulibaly — a petty criminal of Senegalese descent who regularly showed up on the police blotter dating back to his teens, radicalized to the Islamist cause in 2010, five years ago. They married in an Islamic religious ceremony in July 2009, a marital union not recognized under French law. Boumeddiene stayed loyal to her husband when he was arrested for his involvement in a plan to free an Algerian serving time for a 1995 subway bombing and was waiting for him when he was released after serving his sentence.
The couple had been living in an apartment over an Indian restaurant in the Paris suburb of Fontenay-auxRoses. Boumeddiene was described by neighbours as a devout Muslim, “polite” but withdrawn; she was often spotted riding around the area on her scooter. According to a report in Le Parisien, she lost her job as a cashier because she insisted on wearing her niqab. She has no criminal record. The dramatic photos of Boumeddiene wielding weapons were apparently shot in the forest around Grenoble, France, in 2010. That was the year police conducted a search of the couple’s apartment, turning up the crossbow, 240 rounds of ammunition and photos of a trip they’d taken to Malaysia.
Boumeddiene reportedly accompanied Coulibaly on visits he made to the radical preacher Djamel Beghal while he was under house arrest in south-central France. The firebrand Beghal, who claims to have met Osama bin Laden, also recruited Chérif Kouachi. He was sentenced to 10 years for a plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Paris.
The newspaper Le Monde has winkled out documents related to a 2010 interrogation of Boumeddiene by counterterrorism officers. Asked about her reaction to acts of atrocity committed by Al Qaeda, she responded: “I don’t have any opinion,” but immediately added, unable to resist, that Muslim innocents killed by innocents needed to be defended.
According to those judicial records, also obtained by The Associated Press, Boumeddiene told police that she rather doubted the genuine extent of her lover’s faith. “Amedy isn’t really very religious. He likes having fun.”