Malika El Aroud

El Aroud was born in Morocco and moved to Brussels with her family as a child. It was when she was in her thirties and a single parent to her daughter, that she rediscovered religion and began frequenting the Centre Islamique Belge, where she married Abdessatar Dahmane.[4]

In 2001 El Aroud joined her husband in Afghanistan, living in a camp at Jalalabad. Her husband was sent on a suicide mission by Al-Qaeda to assassinate the anti-Taliban resistance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud. The widowed El Aroud was then repatriated to Belgium, where she stood trial along with 22 others for complicity in Massoud's murder. She claimed that she was doing humanitarian work and knew nothing of her husband's mission and was acquitted due to lack of evidence.[4] "Your ideas are very extreme, but I cannot sentence you for them," said the judge.[3]

In February 2005 El Aroud was detained along with her Tunisian-born new husband Moez Garsalloui in an anti-terror raid while living in Switzerland (near Fribourg) and operating websites in support of Al-Qaeda. In June 2007 a Swiss court found Garsalloui guilty of supporting criminal organisations and inciting violence via their websites and El Aroud guilty of aiding and abetting him. Garsalloui was given a six month prison sentence, while El Aroud received a suspended sentence.[5]

Returning to Belgium, El Aroud continued her internet propaganda for Al-Qaeda, using the name Oum Obeyda and encouraging men to fight for jihad. In 2008 she gave an interview to journalists Elaine Sciolino and Souad Mekhennet of The New York Times, in which she said "I have a weapon. It's to write. It's to speak out. That's my jihad. You can do many things with words. Writing is also a bomb."[4] The director of Belgium's federal police force described her as a potential threat, saying: "Her jihad is not to lead an operation but to inspire other people to wage jihad".[4]

In December 2008, El Aroud was one of a number of people arrested in Belgium on suspicion of having links with Al-Qaeda or of planning a terrorist attack, possibly on a two-day EU leaders' summit in Brussels.[6] In February 2009, CNN presented a previous 2006 interview with El Aroud, as well as interviews with various people familiar with her activities or involved with her court proceedings, as part of the series "World's Untold Stories".[7]

El Aroud went on trial in March 2010, accused with her husband Garsallaoui of heading a terrorist cell linked to Al-Qaeda and running a website that urged Muslims to sacrifice themselves in jihad. They stood trial with a further seven defendants, Garsallaoui and another defendant being tried in absentia.[8] In May 2010, she was convicted of leading a terrorist group linked with Al-Qaeda which recruited militants in France and Belgium to fight in Afghanistan. She was sentenced to eight years in prison.[9]

In 2014 the government started proceedings to revoke El Aroud's Belgian citizenship. El Aroud challenged the proceedings but lost her case in the Court of Appeal in Brussels in November 2017.[10] A few days later she was arrested in order to be deported to Morocco.[11] She appealed against the order and claimed asylum in Belgium but lost her appeal in February 2019.[12] The deportation did not go ahead due to a lack of cooperation from the Moroccan authorities.[13]

El Aroud died in Belgium on 5 April 2023, at the age of 64.[3]