The Widow of a Paris Terrorist and Other Real Wives of Islamic State

[cbayer]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/14/the-widow-of-a-paris-terrorist-and-other-real-wives-of-islamic-state.html

Jamie Dettmer

VEILED THREATS
01.14.15

The high-profile spouses of ISIS killers often have surprising backgrounds from bikini-wearing sun worshipers to guitar-toting band members.

ISTANBUL—On the CCTV footage released by Turkish police, the widow of one of the Islamic fanatics responsible for last week’s terror rampage in Paris comes across as prim, even drab, as she goes through passport control at the airport here.

Hayat Boumeddiene’s tightly drawn white headscarf and hooded coat is a cultural world away from the scanty bikini she was wearing in a photograph that showed her on a beach fondly clutching future assassin Amedy Coulibaly. The holiday snap was taken before 2009, when she started to cover herself up with scarves and veils.

The transfer is startling from sun-worshipper and eager holidaymaker to the buttoned-up moll of an Islamic assassin. The 26-year-old looks giddily in love cuddling Coulibaly—a display of public affection hardly in keeping with the puritanical strictures of Salafi jihadis.

Her now-dead partner also used to pursue a lifestyle that clashed with the teachings of Islamic militants. Neither were paragons of religious rectitude. French police arrested Coulibaly on a string of theft and drug offenses before he embarked on the path of jihad and ended up gunning down four Jews at a kosher supermarket in Paris last week. In the caliphate of the self-styled Islamic State, where, according to Turkish authorities, Boumeddiene has found sanctuary and to whom Coulibaly apparently aligned himself, theft and drug use incur far worse punishments than those meted out by the unenlightened West—including flogging, amputation, and execution.

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