IT'S THE ISLAM...
AP Enterprise: How Uzbek teen may have been transformed into suicide bomber
Associated Press Writer
Sunday, April 25, 2004
(04-25) 10:14 PDT TASHKENT, Uzbekistan (AP) --
...That was before her transformation beginning a couple of years ago, her parents said, into a zealous Muslim who studied Arabic so she could read the Quran and always wore a veil -- and ending when she allegedly blew herself up March 29 at a Tashkent bazaar in the country's first-ever suicide attack.
Authorities say 19-year-old Khalmuradova killed two police officers and a 4-year-old child, part of a chain of other suicide attacks, assaults on police and explosions that killed at least 47 people, mostly alleged militants. Her older sister, Shakhnoza, is now on the run, accused in wanted posters as a would-be "kamikaze."
President Islam Karimov has said the perpetrators were brainwashed, and he has urged teachers to help students resist such influences. The country's top prosecutor says the militants were influenced by extremist groups, and some were trained abroad by al-Qaida Arabs.
The girls' parents, who are not religious, said they were so alarmed by their daughters' direction that last year they grounded them.
"I didn't like it, I had the maternal feeling that it had to stop, that something wrong was going on," said their mother, Zahro.
But the daughters maintained phone contact with Islamic teachers, the parents say.
again. ...
...Some opposition parties and human rights groups have said the attacks may have been motivated by the regime's oppression and the lack of economic opportunity in this former Soviet republic.
But Zahro said her girls had everything.
"They used the girls," she said. "These terrorists programmed them, hypnotized them."
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