Hayat Boumeddiene: France’s most-wanted woman and her path to jihadism
Hayat Boumeddiene, wife of Paris kosher store attacker Amedy Coulibaly, remains on the run in Syria and is a key target for investigators
France's most-wanted woman once loved the warm waves of the Dominican Republic, posing in a black bikini with her future husband, a petty thief.
As her faith deepened, she exchanged the bathing suits for headscarfs and mosques in Malaysia, a pilgrimage to Mecca, and now, authorities say, the jihadist cauldron of Syria.
Hayat Boumeddiene said she lived to travel; now she is on the run. She fled to the Islamic State the day before her husband attacked a kosher supermarket in Paris, investigators say.
With the three Paris attackers dead, Boumeddiene, a 26-year-old native, is emerging as a key target for investigators, who think she knows crucial details about the planning of the three days of violence that terrorised France, claiming 17 victims.
Understanding Boumeddiene's radicalisation is especially valuable, authorities say, since they believe women are increasingly becoming the backbone of such plots. A jihadist text written by a prominent Belgian woman with ties to al-Qaeda, Malika El Aroud, was found among Boumeddiene's possessions after she disappeared.
Much remains unclear about Boumeddiene's role in the Paris attacks. But she fled France days before the violence, and authorities believe she played a key role passing messages as the plot took shape.
