Just a minor news item, even in Germany, but it made me cringe. It has happened last month but the news came out today.

A Berlin woman, a recent convert to Islam, had decided to serve in the jihad as a suicide bomber in Iraq. That's nothing new, there are quite a few of them from Europe and she would not even be the first female European to blow herself up in Iraq. Fresh converts (to whatever) are often quite radical and want to prove they are true believers.

What makes this case special is that she had planned to take her 1 year old baby with her as a cover (both when leaving Germany and when approaching a valuable target) and, eventually, victim. She had posted that plan in one of the many jihad internet fora and had asked for how to best go on (there are jihad 'travel agencies' on the web).

Those who read these sites with a professional interest took her serious, found her out and searched her flat. What they found corroborated what she had posted (she might have made a very bad joke). The kid has been taken away from her, of course (poor baby, doesn't understand why s/he's not allowed to see her mother anymore). She has been in a psychiatric institution for two weeks but is free now. To post such a plan is not illegal in Germany and as long as her planning doesn't get more concrete it will not be.

I really wonder what she had in her head. But even in fathers (usually much more likely than mothers to kill their own children shortly before or with a suicide) I never could understand.

Wolfgang