Fatiha Mejjati (; born ) is a Moroccan jihadist. She is the widow of Karim Mejjati, co-founder of the

Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group The Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, known by the French acronym GICM (''Groupe Islamique Combattant Marocain''), is a Salafi jihadist terrorist organisation affiliated with Al-Qaeda. The GICM is one of several North African terrorist franchise ...

and member of

Al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremism, Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arab, Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military ta ...

. Karim Mejjati is suspected of planning the

2003 Casablanca bombings The 2003 Casablanca bombings were a series of suicide bombings on May 16, 2003, in Casablanca, Morocco. The attacks were the deadliest terrorist attacks in the country's history. Forty-five people were killed in the attacks (33 victims and 12 ...

and the

2004 Madrid train bombings The 2004 Madrid train bombings (also known in Spain as 11M) were a series of coordinated, nearly simultaneous bombings against the Cercanías Madrid, Cercanías commuter train system of Madrid, Spain, on the morning of 11 March 2004—three days ...

. She is a member of ISIL and is believed to be living in Syria.

Biography

Fatiha Mohamed Taher Hassani was born in 1961 to a carpenter father and a housewife mother in Derb Sultan,

Casablanca Casablanca, also known in Arabic as Dar al-Bayda ( ar, الدَّار الْبَيْضَاء, al-Dār al-Bayḍāʾ, ; ber, ⴹⴹⴰⵕⵍⴱⵉⴹⴰ, ḍḍaṛlbiḍa, : "White House") is the largest city in Morocco and the country's econom ...

. Hassani had five sisters and a brother. She received her

Baccalauréat The ''baccalauréat'' (; ), often known in France colloquially as the ''bac'', is a French national academic qualification that students can obtain at the completion of their secondary education (at the end of the ''lycée'') by meeting certain ...

in Literature and Human Sciences in 1980 and received a degree in French private law from Hassan II University of Casablanca in 1985. She joined the Moroccan Institute of Management as a management assistant in 1990. Hassani's radicalization began in 1991, as a result of Gulf War, she forced into retirement by the head of the institute for wearing a hijab. Students circulate a petition in support of Hassani, the petition was signed by Karim Mejjati. Fatiha bought Karim, who barely knew Arabic, a French translation of the Quran. They married less than a year later. The pair had two sons. According to the ''

Morocco World News ''Morocco World News'' (MWN) is an English language e-newspaper with its headquarters in Rabat and Washington, D.C. It publishes news about Morocco and MENA region on a wide range of topics, including politics, economics, international relations ...

'', Karim Mejjat was the founder of the

, which it said owed allegiance to

Osama bin Laden Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was a Saudi-born extremist militant who founded al-Qaeda and served as its leader from 1988 until Killing of Osama bin Laden, his death in 2011. Ideologically a Pan-Islamism ...

. It reports that they moved to Afghanistan, when it was ruled by the Taliban. ''

Foreign Policy A State (polity), state's foreign policy or external policy (as opposed to internal or domestic policy) is its objectives and activities in relation to its interactions with other states, unions, and other political entities, whether bilaterall ...

'' reports they moved to Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002. Her husband Karim is reported to have gone to Saudi Arabia, in 2003, where he served as an

agent. However, he is also alleged to have planned the

, in May 2003. Fatiha and one of her sons were detained by Morocco for several months in Morocco in 2003. Her husband Karim was also reported to have played a planning role in the

. In 2005 he was living in Saudi Arabia again, with one of the pair's sons, when they were killed during a gunfight with Saudi security forces in April, 2005. '' France 24'' interviewed Fatiha, and published a profile of her, after she published a warning to France that it should be concerned it would be attacked by jihadists. In that interview she denied that she had any ties with al Qaeda, and clarified she did not know of any specific plans to attack France, rather, her warning was based on the perception that, since France sat out the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it had been turning against the Muslim world. Her surviving son, Ilyas Mejjat, went to work for ISIL's media arm. After moving to the territory controlled by ISIL she came to lead the

Al-Khansaa Brigade The Al-Khansaa Brigade ( ar, لواء الخنساء) was an all-women police or religious enforcement unit of the jihadist group Islamic State (IS), operating in its ''de facto'' capital of Raqqa and Mosul. History The brigade was formed in ear ...

, an all-woman unit charged with enforcing the ISIL interpretation of female modesty, proper female attire. ''

Jeune Afrique ''Jeune Afrique'' (English: ''Young Africa'') is a French-language pan-African weekly news magazine, founded in 1960 in Tunis and subsequently published in Paris. It is the most widely read pan-African magazine. It is also a book publisher, unde ...

'' reported that she married a senior ISIL leader, in 2014.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mejjati, Fatiha 1961 births Living people Moroccan Islamists Moroccan expatriates in Afghanistan Moroccan al-Qaeda members Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant members