 | « Back to article | Print this article |
Hasna Ait Boulahcen, the female suicide bomber who is believed to have blown herself up after a gun battle with French police was a “party animal who loved clubbing”.
Her story is that of a young woman from a broken home with an unstable disposition, who was nicknamed “Cowgirl” because of her penchant for cowboy hats before her dramatic conversion to radical Islam.
Her family and friends in describing her, say she was a party animal with a bad reputation, known for having a string of boyfriends and drinking and smoking. According to them, she had no interest in religion, never read the Koran and had only started wearing a Muslim veil a few months ago.
Her brother was quoted as saying, “It was around six months ago she had started wearing a full-faced veil or niqab and had become radicalised. She was unstable, she created her own bubble. She wasn't looking to study religion, I have never even seen her open a Koran.”
A friend of hers, identified as Mattius Jacques, said, “She was normal. She wore Western clothes, she never wore a hijab. She didn’t go to mosque or pray. She never spoke about the news or Palestine or anything. She wasn’t religious at all. She was like you and me, she went out, she lived a free life, always out partying.
Ait Boulahcen is believed to be the cousin of the attacks' mastermind Abdelhami Abaaoud.
Her mum has insisted that her "lovely daughter" had been brainwashed.
Ait Boulahcen, 26, is said to have detonated an explosive vest during a seven-hour armed siege in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis on Wednesday.
Friends claim her life took a sinister path after France banned the burka.
She used to wear to work a niqab -- which only showed her eyes and quit her job in 2014 two years after the ban was introduced.
Witnesses said she went to a KFC chicken shop to get some food and looked 'relaxed' just hours before the explosion that brought the chaotic scenes to a close.