Iraqi police have arrested a woman who has confessed to recruiting more than 80 female suicide bombers and who helped orchestrate dozens of attacks, a senior officer said on Tuesday. Samira Jassim, 51, admitted that she had mentally prepared the women for martyrdom operations, passed them on to terrorists who provided explosives, and then took the bombers to their targets.
"She confessed to training more than 28 female suicide bombers, all of whom conducted operations in different parts of Iraq," Baghdad security spokesman Major-General Qassim al-Moussawi said.
The woman was a member of the Sunni Arab militant Islamist group Ansar al-Sunna and was captured Jan. 21 at an undisclosed location two weeks ago, Moussawi said.
"Mother of the Believers"
"We arrested Samira Jassim, known as 'Um al-Mumenin', the mother of the believers, who was responsible for recruiting 80 women" suicide bombers, Major General Qassim Atta told reporters in Baghdad.
Moussawi played a video in which Jassim, a middle-aged woman in a traditional black robe, appeared to confess to training a female bomber who attacked a police station in Diyala.
"I was introduced to her, I began talking to her," Jassim could be heard saying in the video, much of which was difficult to hear when played back at the news conference.
"She sent them to the terrorists, in one of the farms where they provided the suicidal women with bombs, then Jassim took the women to the targeted place," Atta said.
Two of the attacks for which Jassim admitted responsibility in the video confession took place in restive Diyala province, in central Iraq, which is considered one of the most dangerous areas of the country.
Al Qaeda and other groups have increasingly sent women and girls on suicide bombing missions because they are less likely to be detected in searches, a tactic that became more common in 2007 and 2008.