Smertnizy
Shahidka (suicides, Russian смертницы ) Schachidki (martyrs, Russian шахидки - by Shaheed ) or Black Widow , the Chechen female suicide bombers called.
After it was previously unthinkable in the strictly patriarchal Chechen society that women would take up arms, the first suicide bombing of two women was carried out on June 7, 2000 when they blew themselves up with a car bomb in front of a Russian police building.
Women were also among the hostage-takers at Moscow's Dubrovka Theater in October 2002. Fatima Munajewa and Raissa Munajewa had lost their father, a younger and two older brothers and other relatives in the clean-up operations of the Russian troops in Chechnya , and a few months before the hostage-taking in the Northeast Theater they were recruited by rebel troops together with other women and trained in weapons.
In some cases, the young women who were sent to suicide bombings by Chechen rebel troops did not know what was in store for them. For example, 15-year-old Sarema Inarkayeva was unsuspectingly sent off on February 5, 2002 to deposit a sports bag in front of the Russian police station in Grozny . Others, however, like 26-year-old Sinaida Aliyeva, who killed 15 people at a rock festival on Moscow's Tushino airfield in July 2003 , knew exactly what they were doing.
Also in July 2003, Sarema Musakhoyeva was arrested in a Moscow restaurant when she was about to detonate a bomb. In the hope of a mild sentence, she cooperated with the authorities, whereupon several of her backers were arrested. After she was sentenced to 20 years in prison, a few hours after the verdict was confirmed by the Supreme Court in Moscow, another young Chechen woman blew herself up in the Moscow metro station Riga along with eleven other people, in addition to the fatalities there were also fifty other injuries.
In the hijackings on 24 August 2004 also two "black widows" were involved who used at the security of the passports of two presumably murdered other women.
“Black widows” were also among those who took more than 1200 adults and children hostage in a school in Beslan in North Ossetia in September 2004 .
literature
- Julia Jusik: The Brides of Allah. Suicide bombers from Chechnya. NP-Buchverlag, St. Pölten / Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-85326-373-9 .
- Sabine Adler : I was supposed to die as a black widow. The story of Raissa and her dead sisters. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-421-05871-7 .