Moroccan woman mistaken as jihadi in bubble-bath pic: 'I cannot go out anymore'
Nabila Bakkatha says her life changed drastically after she was erroneously identified as a terrorist involved in the attacks on Paris
A Moroccan woman says that media incorrectly identified her as a suicide bomber in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Paris earlier this month.
Nabila Bakkatha, who first spoke out in an interview with Moroccan news outlet Alyaoum24, says that a bitter ex-friend duped a journalist into buying a picture of her naked in a bubble bath. Apparently, the old pal was capitalizing on Bakkatha’s resemblance to Hasna Ait Boulahcen, the woman who died during a police raid in the suburb of Saint-Denis days after the tragedy.
"The photograph was taken by my friend, who sold it to a French journalist after the Paris attacks in revenge,” Bakkatha told CNN. "Another friend called me saying that my photographs are ... on the front pages of a number of international newspapers.”
The Daily Mail was first to publish the seminude photo on its website, describing the terror suspect as a “party animal with a string of boyfriends who had shown no interest in religion.” Afterward, outlets around the world ran with the image.
The New York Post splashed it across their Nov. 20 cover with the words, “Rub a dub dub … thug in a tub: Here is Paris suicide bomber.”
The paper found itself in a similar situation three days after the April 2013 Boston Marathon when it published an infamous cover showing two innocent men with a backpack and gym bag standing near the tragedy site, reading “Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon." The men in the picture, Salaheddin Barhoum and Yassine Zaimi, filed a defamation lawsuit against the Rupert Murdoch-owned paper. It was later settled out of court.
The terrorists behind the attack were later identified as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Bakkatha, who is from the city of Beni Mellal, told Al Jazeera’s AJ+ that she is not affiliated with terrorism in any way. She also wants family and friends she has not seen in years to know that she is not dead.
“I have no connection to Hasna or terrorism. My only connection is that my photos were sold to the journalist who published it,” she said to the news channel. “The journalist didn’t research or anything. He just published what he got.”
According to Bakkatha, the bathroom photograph was taken when she lived in northern France before the women’s relationship went south and she returned to Morocco, in 2007.
"My life changed drastically, I stopped going to work, and I cannot go out anymore, as I live in continuous fear," she said to CNN. "I am sure I will face a lot of problems if I travel to France."
It was later determined that Boulahcen, who was the cousin of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the man suspected of coordinating the terrorist attacks, was not the person who detonated a suicide vest during the raid.
The Daily Mail has not yet responded to Yahoo News’ request for comment.
