Muriel Degauque

Muriel Degauque (; 19 July 1967 – 9 November 2005) was a Belgian woman from Charleroi and a convert to Islam. La Derniere Heure, a Belgian newspaper, claimed on 1 December 2005 that she was a suicide bomber in Iraq. According to Belgian authorities, a Belgian woman committed a suicide car bomb attack on 9 November 2005 against a U.S. military convoy in the town of Baquba, north of Baghdad. The Belgian was the only person killed, and an American soldier was wounded.

Belgian authorities subsequently interrogated her family and concluded that Degauque was the bomber. A bakery worker, she married a Muslim man and quickly became radical in her religious views. The couple moved into Iraq from the Syrian border, presumably to join the Iraqi insurgency. Degauque's husband failed to detonate his explosive belt and was killed in a separate incident by US troops.

Biography

Early life Degauque was born in Monceau-sur-Sambre, a suburb on the outskirts of Charleroi, to Jean Degauque, a crane operator and Liliane Degauue, a school monitor. She was raised Roman Catholic.

Teachers recall that she was "more literary than scientific". During her last years of high school, she worked at a local bakery. She became known to locals and to police as a drug user and frequently ran away from home, although she was never arrested. Degauque would go on to join the Apaches, a local motorcycle club her older brother was also a member of. Many attribute her deviant behaviour to her brother's death in a motorcycle crash when she was 20. Degauque subsequently moved out of the house and married an older Turkish national in what was presumed to be a marriage of convenience to help him obtain legal residence in Belgium. The couple would divorce about two years later, and she was noted to have had several boyfriends after.

Conversion to Islam and radicalization After meeting an Algerian man, she converted to Islam and began donning a head scarf. Her family did not disapprove of the conversion initially and her mother told neighbors she was pleased because her daughter's new faith helped her quit drinking and taking drugs. Her religiosity raised concerns several years later when Degauque met Issam Goris, the son of a Belgian man and Moroccan woman and a known radical Islamist. She adopted the name Myriam, and the couple married and moved to Brussels, then Morocco, where she would learn Arabic and study the Quran.

Upon returning from Morocco, Degauque started wearing a chador and the niqab. She and Goris moved into a small apartment not far away from his mother in an ethnic neighbourhood near Brussels' Midi train station. The building's owner recalled that Degauque collected unemployment benefits. It is unknown what Goris's occupation was. Her relations with her parents became increasingly strained as she demanded they follow Islamic customs when she visited, forbidding her father to drink and insisting on the separation of the sexes during meals.

Earlier that day, Goris, also wearing an explosives vest, was shot and killed by American soldiers as he tried to carry out an attack in another location.

Aftermath Belgian and French police continued surveillance operations until French press reported that Degauque was the attacker. Her identity had been unknown at the time. Fearing members of the cell would cease operations and go under the radar, Belgian and French authorities promptly arrested 15 people in a number of cities for allegedly grooming and recruiting suicide bombers. Most of the suspects were released shortly after.