CIA bomber's wife 'proud of him'

ISTANBUL, Turkey - The Jordanian doctor-turned-suicide bomber who killed seven CIA employees at a base in Afghanistan is regarded by his family as a martyr in Islam's holy war against the United States, his wife said yesterday.

Covered in a black Islamic chador, Defne Bayrak, the Turkish wife of Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, lauded his Dec. 30 attack to Turkish journalists in Istanbul.

"I am proud of him; my husband has carried out a great operation in such a war," Bayrak told the Dogan news agency. "May God accept his martyrdom."

Turkish police questioned Bayrak after her remarks, her family said. Police confirmed that she had been questioned and released.

Radical Islamists from around the world praised Balawi on Jihad forums and religious Web sites. "He plunged into the midst of the enemy and carried out a martyrdom operation, detonating his creative and perfect explosive belt," said a eulogy on a site called Online Jihad.

Bayrak, 30, met her Kuwait-born husband while he was studying medicine in Istanbul. They married there in 2001 and moved to Jordan in 2002, when he graduated.

Bayrak, an Arabic-language translator for some pro-Islamic Turkish media outlets, said it was not surprising her husband joined the jihad, since he often wrote on jihad Web sites when they lived in Jordan.

Turkish media reported that Bayrak was the author of a book titled Osama bin Laden the Che Guevara of the East, and had translated into Turkish an anti-American book by Saddam Hussein titled Begone, Demons.

Bayrak denied that her husband had been recruited to work for the CIA.

"He had so much hatred for the United States that he could not have been an agent for the CIA," she said. "He might have used Americans and Jordan for his own interest, which he did."

Jordanian intelligence officials have said they believed the devout 32-year-old doctor had been persuaded to support U.S. efforts against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. They said Balawi was recruited to help capture or kill Ayman al-Zawahiri, a doctor from Egypt who is bin Laden's right-hand man, according to a counterterrorism official based in the Mideast.

Bayrak said her husband was detained in jail for three days in January by Jordanian intelligence.

"They raided our home late at night on Jan. 19," she said. ". . . They took away my husband and seized his computer because my husband was writing on Jihad forums."

Balawi was, in fact, a leading Internet Islamic militant writer known as Abu Dujana al-Khurasani, who prayed to God two days after Israel began its offensive on Gaza last winter to become a martyr by killing many Israelis.

"I have never wished to be in Gaza, but now I wish to be a bomb fired by the monotheists or a car bomb that takes the lives of the biggest number of Jews to hell," Balawi wrote under his pseudonym.

To his wife, he was an affectionate father to two daughters, ages 5 and 7. "He never used force against us. ... I love him," she said.

She said her daughters were not aware of his death.

"I think I will wait until they grow up a bit before telling them, if they don't discover it from media," she said. "They will miss their father, but they're fond of me, so I think I can manage."

The attack by Balawi was a major blow to the CIA in Afghanistan. The dead included the CIA base chief in Khost, a 45-year-old woman with three small children who was a member of a former unit known as Alec Station, created before the Sept. 11 attacks to track down bin Laden. Her family declined to comment yesterday.

The brother of another victim, Elizabeth Hanson, 30, confirmed her death yesterday. Duane Hanson III of Rockford, Ill., said his family was "very proud of her." He said it planned to issue a statement soon about his sister, his only sibling.