Female bomber ‘normal as a kid’

MONCEAU-SUR-SAMBRE, Belgium — She was the typical girl-next-door — pretty daughter of a hospital secretary who grew up on a quiet street in this rust-belt town and finished high school before becoming a baker’s assistant.

Years later she was in Baghdad, carrying out a suicide bombing in the name of jihad — a disturbing sign of the reach of Islamist militancy.

Neighbors say Muriel Degauque, who blew herself up last month at age 38 trying to attack U.S. troops, had lived a conventional life but became heavily involved in Islam after marrying an Algerian.

“She was absolutely normal as a kid,” said Jeannine Samain, who lives a few doors down from the Degauque family home in the shadows of a towering coal pile. “When it snowed, they would go to the hill together with the sled.”

She recalled the last time she saw Degauque, eight months ago: “She was veiled. By that time she would just say ’bonjour’ and that was it.”

Belgian prosecutors say Degauque carried out an attack Nov. 9 near an American military patrol in Iraq after entering the country from Syria a month ago, and she was the only person killed.

“It is the first time that we see a Western woman, a Belgian, marrying a radical Muslim and is converted up to the point of becoming a jihad fighter,” federal police director Glenn Audenaert said.

Authorities say Degauque had been a member of a terror group that embraced al Qaeda’s ideology. The group included her second husband, a Belgian of Moroccan origin who entered Iraq with Degauque and was killed in murky circumstances while trying to set up a separate suicide bombing.

Press reports said Degauque had problems with drugs and alcohol as an adolescent but later turned to a particularly strict form of Islam.

When the woman’s mother, Liliane Degauque, saw police coming to her doorstep on Wednesday, she said she knew immediately what it was about. She had heard reports the evening before that there was a terrorist attack on Nov. 9 by a Belgian woman and sensed it was her daughter.

“For three weeks already I tried to contact her by telephone, but I got the answering machine,” she told the RTBF network.

Monceau-sur-Sambre bristles with factory smokestacks and uneven cobblestone streets lead to cheap supermarkets in the town, located near the industrial city of Charleroi.

But the Degauques’ brick home at 33 Rue de l’Europe is a touch more genteel than others. Liliane Degauque is a medical secretary and Muriel’s father, Jean, is a retired factory worker.

Authorities yesterday formally arrested five of 14 suspects detained in dawn raids the day before and charged them with involvement in a terrorist network that sent volunteers to Iraq, including Degauque.