PARIS — To her
friends and neighbours she was the bubbly, outgoing woman who liked
wearing large cowboy hats.

But on Wednesday it became clear
there was a far darker side to Hasna Aitboulahcen, when she achieved the
dubious distinction of becoming Europe’s first female suicide bomber.

The 26-year-old blew herself up as
police stormed the flat where she was holed up with six fellow terrorists. The
other terrorist killed in the siege was thought to be her cousin Abdelhamid
Abaaoud, the ringleader of last Friday’s attacks in Paris which left 129 dead.

Shortly after 6 a.m., as elite
police and soldiers surrounded the flat in Saint-Denis, Aitboulahcen appeared
at a window, shouting “help me, help me,” perhaps to lure officers in. She is
reported to have been the first to open fire, using a Kalashnikov assault
rifle.

The police tried to talk to
Aitboulahcen, asking her: “Where’s your boyfriend?”

“He’s not my boyfriend!” she
screamed in reply. Seconds later, she detonated a suicide vest, killing herself
and causing the floor of the apartment to collapse.

itboulahcen’s death, and the role
she appears to have played in the terror cell, has shocked those who knew her.

Her brother, Youssouf Aitboulahcen,
said she had no interest in religion and started wearing a veil only a month
ago.

“She spent her time criticizing
everything,” he said. “She was living in her own world. I never saw her open
the Qur’an. She was permanently on her phone, looking at Facebook or WhatsApp.

“I told her to stop all of this but
she would not listen, she ignored my numerous attempts to give her advice.”

Three weeks ago, Aitboulahcen left
her mother’s home to live with a female friend in Drancy, a suburb of northeast
Paris. Then on Sunday, two days after the attacks, she phoned her brother
at 7 p.m.

“She sounded like she had given up
on life,” her brother said. He drove over to check on her but got no
answer.

“She called me and I put the phone
down on her after getting me to come over for nothing.

“Finally on Wednesday morning I
turned on the TV and I learned that she had killed herself, sacrificing the
life that the Lord had given.

“From the age of five she was taken
into care, so she grew up with a foster family. She was happy and she
flourished. Then as she grew up she went off the rails. She became reckless,
running away and choosing bad company.”

One neighbour, who identified
himself only as Hassane, described her as a tomboy, always dressed in jeans,
sneakers and a black cap, until about eight months ago, when she
adopted the niqab.

“She wasn’t scared of anyone,”
Hassane said. “She was like a little soldier. She was very lively, very
dynamic.”

The retired 62-year-old said
Aitboulahcen was always very helpful and had once carried his heavy shopping
for him.

“I can’t believe she’s part of this
sect,” Hassane said. “When I heard it I felt sick. She was like all young girls
— it was who she was hanging out with.”Abdelhamid
Abaaoud, suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks.

Others described her as an
extrovert who drank alcohol and was nicknamed “the cowgirl” for her habit of
wearing cowboy hats. But it is now clear that she also became deeply
radicalized. On her Facebook page, seen by the Belgian news website DH.be, she
is pictured wearing a niqab and brandishing firearms.

She also wrote messages praising
Hayat Boumeddiene — the wife of Amedy Coulibaly, who attacked a Jewish
supermarket in Paris last January — who fled to Syria.

After trying unsuccessfully to
travel to Syria herself, Aitboulahcen “offered her services to commit terrorist
attacks in France,” according to police sources. At around the same time she
was placed under “triple surveillance” by French intelligence, judges and
police for drug-running and terror activities.

Aitboulahcen’s Moroccan family
arrived in France in 1973 and settled in Paris, where she was born in 1989, in
the suburb of Clichy-la-Garenne. Her father, 75, separated from her mother and
moved to Creutzwald, near Metz, before moving back to Morocco six months ago.

The Moroccan intelligence services
reportedly identified Aitboulahcen as being involved in the Paris attacks,
leading police to the flat where she was holed up with her fellow terrorists. 

-The Daily Telegraph