Hasna Ait Boulahcen: Woman ‘was not suicide bomber’ in raid

The woman thought to have blown herself up alongside the organiser of the Paris terror attacks was not a suicide bomber, it has emerged.

For two days, it had appeared that Hasna Aït Boulahcen, 26, whose passport was found in the apartment, had detonated a suicide belt as police closed in. But investigators had been cautious as they sifted through the scene, a slow process because the raid caused the floor to collapse and left the building unsafe.

Then on Friday, they discovered a head and a piece of a spinal cord in the street outside – the remains of someone who’d been blown up. Forensic teams determined that the head had belonged to a man. Decapitation is a common occurrence in suicide belt explosions.

The man has not been identified. The English newspaper The Guardian talked to the prosecutor and quoted him saying: “All I can tell you is that the kamikaze was not Hasna.”

She is, however, reported to be a cousin of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the so-called mastermind behind the Nov. 13 attacks that killed 130 and injured 351. Police now believe she was caught by the blast when the suicide bomber detonated his belt.

Agencies/Canadajournal