Female suicide bombers from the Caucasus, known as the Black Widows, have targeted Russian civilians and security personnel in multiple attacks over the past decade. In the Russian media, the term "Black Widow" has been applied to all female suicide bomber regardless of ethnicity and there are other groups bearing the monika "Black Widows." In 2012 a Black Widow suicide bomber carried out an attack in Dagestan that killed a moderate Sufi cleric and six other people. The attack was the third in two months against prominent Muslim clerics who were working to promote moderate versions of Islam in Russia. The attacker, a convert to Islam whose current husband as well as two previous husbands were Islamist militants, was the first known ethnic Russian female to become a suicide bomber. They are called black widows because they have usually lost their husbands, brothers or close relatives in one of the two Chechen wars that Russia fought against Islamist rebels since 1994 or…
Black Widows - Chechen Republic -- GENERAL TERMINOLOGY
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