A woman suspected of recruiting dozens of female suicide bombers in Iraq has told how she arranged the rape of victims and then convinced them martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame.
The Iraqi military announced the arrest of the woman yesterday, and played reporters video footage of her confessing to her role as a recruiter.
She explains in the footage how she recruited women, took them to an orchard for training, and finally picked them up and led them to their targets.
Later, during an interview from jail with the The Associated Press, conducted with interrogators standing nearby, the woman told how she helped plan the rapes of young women.
She said she would then step in to persuade the victims to become suicide bombers as their only escape from the shame.
The woman has been identified as Samira Ahmed Jassim, who is nicknamed "Umm al-Mumineen," which means the mother of believers.
In her video confession, the woman says she was acting on behalf of insurgents based in the volatile Diyala province, north of Baghdad.
Iraqi military spokesman Major General Qassim al-Moussawi said the suspect had recruited more than 80 women willing to carry out attacks and had admitted masterminding 28 bombings in different areas.
The US and Iraqi militaries have made past claims about efforts by insurgents to recruit vulnerable women and children as attackers, while providing little evidence.
The claims included that two women who blew themselves up last year in Baghdad had Down's Syndrome, statements later proved to be exaggerated.
It was not possible to independently verify the claims of using rape as a tool to recruit women bombers in the volatile Diyala province northeast of Baghdad.
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