France’s most-wanted woman once loved the warm waves of the Dominican Republic, posing in a black bikini with her future husband, a petty thief. As her faith deepened, she exchanged the bathing suits for head scarves and new destinations: mosques in Malaysia, a pilgrimage to Mecca and now, authorities say, the jihadist cauldron of Syria, reports The Washington Post.
Hayat Boumeddiene said she lived to travel, and now she is on the lam. She fled into the arms of the Islamic State the day before her husband attacked a kosher grocery in Paris on Jan. 9, investigators say. The militant group’s self-proclaimed caliphate spanning Syria and Iraq is drawing aspiring fighters from around the world, including a growing number of women.
With her husband dead, along with the two other men who carried out the Paris attacks last month, Boumeddiene, a 26-year-old native of France, is emerging as a key target for investigators, who think she knows crucial details about the planning of the three days of violence that terrorized France and claimed 17 victims. Understanding Boumeddiene’s path to radicalization is especially valuable, authorities say, since they believe that women are increasingly the backbone of such plots. A copy of a jihadist text written by a prominent Belgian woman with ties to al-Qaeda, Malika El Aroud, was found among Boumeddiene’s possessions after her disappearance.
Much remains unclear about Boumeddiene’s role in the Paris attacks. But she fled France days before the violence, and authorities believe she played a key role passing messages as the plot took shape. Records show more than 500 calls in 2014 between her phone and that of the wife of Chérif Kouachi, one of the two brothers who attacked the offices of the satirical newsweekly Charlie Hebdo on Jan. 7.
Interviews with friends and family as well as investigation files show a long road to disillusionment with the West for Boumeddiene. The journey began in Paris’s tense suburbs and culminated with the bloodshed that has Europe fearing more attacks.