Face of Muslim Madness

AMMAN, Jordan - Strapped with a disabled explosives belt, an Iraqi woman arrested Sunday confessed on television to trying to blow herself up with her husband in one of three suicide attacks earlier this week that killed 57 people.The 35-year-old woman — the sister of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's right-hand man who was killed by U.S. forces in Iraq — appeared on Jordanian state TV hours after she was captured by security forces who were tipped off by an al-Qaida claim that a husband-and-wife team participated in Wednesday's bombings.
Looking nervous and wringing her hands, Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, 35, described how she failed to blow herself up during a wedding reception at the Radisson SAS hotel on Wednesday night after struggling with the cord on her explosives belt.
"My husband wore an (explosives-packed) belt and put one on me. He taught me how to use it," al-Rishawi said, wearing a white head scarf, a black gown and a disabled bomb belt tied around her waist.Deputy Prime Minister Marwan Muasher said the belt she wore in the broadcast was the same one she tried to use in the attack. "The vest was caught with her," he told CNN.
Her husband, Ali Hussein Ali al-Shamari, 35, was identified Sunday as one of three Iraqi men who carried out the bombings. The Grand Hyatt and Days Inn hotels also were bombed.
Muasher said the confession offered further proof that the attacks were the work of al-Qaida in Iraq, which has claimed responsibility. Muasher said the woman was wearing two vests, one packed with explosives and the other with ball bearings to inflict maximum damage. "This technique was used in all three of the attacks," he told CNN. He said authorities hoped the broadcast of the details provided in the broadcast confession would offer some solace to Jordanians shocked by the attacks and he promised the woman would get a fair trial.
Al-Qaida in Iraq, which is led by the Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi, said in its claim of responsibility that there were four bombers, including a woman. The group said the attacks were to strike at Jordan's support for the United States and other Western powers.
A top Jordanian security official, insisting on anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press, said she was arrested Sunday morning at a "safe house" in the same Amman district where her husband rented a furnished apartment recently.
He said Jordanian security was "tipped off" by al-Qaida's claim. "There were leads that more people had been involved, but it was not clear that it was a woman and we had no idea on her nationality," the official said. Al-Rishawi, who is from the volatile Anbar province town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, said she entered Jordan from Iraq with her husband and two other men. She did not identify the two men, but Jordanian authorities have said the other two Iraqi bombers were Rawad Jassem Mohammed Abed and Safaa Mohammed Ali, both 23. "I was traveling with my husband who carried a forged passport under the name of Ali Hussein Ali and mine was Sajida Abdel Qader Latif," she said. "We waited and a white car arrived with a driver and a passenger. We rode with them and entered Jordan (from Iraq)," she said. Once in Amman, she said the four rented an apartment and her husband showed her how to use the bomb. "He said it was for the attack on hotels in Jordan. We rented a car and entered the hotel on Nov. 9. My husband and I went inside and he went to one corner and I went to another," she said. "There was a wedding at the hotel with children, women and men inside."