It's been two days since Rania Ibrahim, 15, was detained by Iraqi Security Forces when they discovered the explosive packed vest around her chest in the northern city of Baqouba.
At first she told police that she had no idea where the vest came from, the next day she told me her husband's relatives gave it to her but she didn't want to die, she didn't know what the vest was.
Today her story changes yet again. She tells us that her husband told her about the beauty of death, convinced her that paradise awaited her if she killed herself and others for the cause of Al Qaida in Iraq.
Today she may be telling the truth as she sits in a small cell with three other women and once again recounted her tale with new lies and new truths.
"My husband started talking to me about the pain of the grave , about praying , the beautiful women in paradise and the river of honey waiting for those who fight the Americans and explode themselves," she said.
"If I die before you I'll be waiting for you for marriage in paradise," she recalled him saying.
Three days before she donned the explosive vest her husband's female cousins took her measurements and prepared the vest.
"The night before I went out, my husband saw me off with kisses on the forehead and chin, hoping to see me in heaven," she said.
In her cell with an investigative judge and a police officer she seemed more alert and spoke more freely on Tuesday.
"I still love my husband and he was good with me," she said.
The child bride was forced into marriage at 14-years-old.
"I discovered that he was fighting the Americans recently. He told me once that they planted a roadside bomb with a friend and waited for a long time for an American patrol, but it was in vain. After that they brought a donkey to detonate so civilians wouldn’t die."
But her husband decided that Rania and he should die for the cause, she said on Tuesday. While her story changed today the fear of a young girl remained. Rania did not want to die, she said.
"I was frightened when they put it on my body," she said referring to her husband's female cousins. "I was worried that it might explode on me...They said I wouldn't feel it."
Once the vest was wrapped around her chest the woman who dressed her, Umm Fatima, told her to go to a school called al Ameen and there she would die. With fear the teenage girl followed the directions, she said. Before she arrived at her destination she was caught.
Read the original story here. Today's interview was conducted by our Iraqi reporter in Diyala who asked not to be named.
What a tragedy that a child such as this should be ensnared in the foulness of war.
Posted by: waldo | September 23, 2008 at 07:54 AM
Even familiar with Islamic culture and the way it treats women, I am unconvinced that Rania did not know what was being strapped around her. No amount of keeping her illiterate and sheltering her from public life would have prevented her knowledge. She has ears and a brain. She is not so much a victim of a war as she is her own culture that finds women expendable in all layers of life and relegates them to domestic labor and child birth. Strapping a bomb around her by her own relatives is yet another example of that. They have a new use for her now. Did she "get caught" or did she "get herself caught?" Imagine the fear she must have felt,a natural fear,that she is about to die. Her whole life nothing more than bowing to the self-appointed power of men and now the one who was entrusted with "protecting" her is sending her to her death. Call it ethnocentric if you like, but it is my opinion that she found a way to save her own life despite the crushing culture that planned to murder her. Her continued "love" for her husband is revolting, but understandable. He,too,is a victim of his culture, aswere the women who took her measurements and strapped on the vest.
Posted by: Kimberly B. | January 15, 2009 at 09:41 AM