What kind of terminally-goobered-up people are we dealing with when we see headlines like "Failed Suicide Bomber Lost Will to Die?"
MOSCOW (AP) -- A Chechen suicide bomber who was arrested after failing to detonate an explosive in a Moscow cafe last summer said in an interview published Tuesday that she had lost her will to die and purposely tried to attract attention to herself.On the one hand, there seems to be some glimmer of hope, at least for this particular failed splodeydope. On the other hand, her handlers are probably glad to be rid of her, since this wasn't the first time she couldn't close the deal:
Zarema Muzhakhoyeva, 23, was detained in July after her strange behavior attracted the attention of security guards at Mon Cafe, a restaurant just off a main avenue leading to the Kremlin. A bomb disposal expert, Maj. Georgy Trofimov, was killed trying to defuse the explosive that she had carried in a bag and left on the sidewalk.
The arrest sent jitters through the Russian capital, still shaken by a double suicide-bombing at a Moscow rock concert five days earlier that killed the two attackers and 14 other people.
Muzhakhoyeva faces charges of terrorism, conspiracy to murder two or more people, and illegal possession and transfer of weapons, the Izvestia daily reported. If convicted, she could spend 25 years in prison.
Muzhakhoyeva told Izvestia that she hopes for acquittal under a law lifting criminal responsibility from people who warn of a terrorist act or its preparation. She described doing her best to attract attention to herself without provoking punishment from the controllers she was sure were following her - and who, she was convinced, could detonate her bomb by remote control.
Abandoned by her mother at 10 months and widowed after her much older husband was shot in a business dispute, Muzhakhoyeva told Izvestia that she turned to terrorism as a way out of shame. She had stolen jewelry from her grandparents and sold it in hopes of being able to start a new life with her young daughter, whom her husband's family had placed with another relative, but the family prevented her from taking the child and then froze her out.No biggie. The Death Cultists just went to their bullpen:
Muzhakhoyeva said she then turned to terrorism, having heard that suicide bombers' families were rewarded $1,000. She spent time in rebel training camps in the mountains of southern Chechnya, and then was assigned to blow up a bus in Mozdok, the Russian military headquarters in the Caucasus region. When the targeted bus turned up, however, she could not bring herself to connect the wires of the bomb she carried, she said.
"At that moment I realized that I could not blow myself up," she recalled.
Another woman completed the job a few days later, killing herself and 15 others.(hat tip: Jihad Watch)
In spite of her failure, Muzhakhoyeva's handlers sent her to Moscow. She lived in a safe house outside the capital with a male guard, a male explosives expert and two women, who blew themselves up at the rock concert just a few days after arriving.
Muzhakhoyeva's case seems different from most other splodeydopes in that she appeared to be in fairly desparate straits, as opposed to the average Palestinian Islamokazi (Islamokaze?). The question is whether Darwin can triumph over the madrassas by killing splodeydopes faster than they can be created. I don't think I like the answer.
Posted by Chris at February 5, 2004 04:56 PM