The Iraqi woman who failed in her bid to blow herself up in an Amman hotel had three brothers killed by US forces, friends of the woman said today.
The killings of Sajida Mubarak al-Rishawi's three brothers in Iraq's volatile Anbar province is being considered as a possible motivation behind her bid to take part in last week's triple bombings, which killed 60 people, including her husband and two Iraqi bombers.
Friends say that Sajida Mubarak al-Rishawi's three brothers were killed
Thamir al-Rishawi, regarded as a known member of an al-Qaeda in Iraq terror cell operating in Anbar, was killed during the April 2004 US operations in Falluja when an air-to-ground missile hit his pickup.
Two other brothers, Ammar and Yassir, were killed in two separate attacks against US troops in Ramadi, said the friends.
Police arrested al-Rishawi on Sunday in a safe house in western Amman after the al-Qaeda in Iraq terror group issued an Internet statement saying a woman was among the four Iraqi attackers.
She revealed no motive in a televised confession Sunday for trying to bomb the Radisson SAS hotel, saying only that she was brought to Jordan from Iraq by her husband, who fitted her with an explosives belt and told her it would be used in a suicide bombing attack.
She could face the death penalty if convicted of conspiring to carry out a terrorist attack that killed people and possessing explosives with the aim of using them illegally, according to a senior security official.