I Am Proud That He Had No Victims': Mother of Paris Attacker Speaks Out Amid Newly Released Information

The mother of Bilal Hadfi, the youngest of the Paris attackers, said she was "proud" that her son killed no one other than himself, the Associated Press reported Monday.

Hadfi detonated a suicide bomb outside France's national soccer stadium, harming no one else in the Nov. 13 attacks that killed 130 people. His mother, Fatima Hadfi, now hopes to reclaim his remains for burial in Morocco.

On Sunday night Fatima called Maghreb TV, a Belgian network with wide viewership among Moroccans living there. On air, she said she wasn’t aware that 20-year-old Bilal had been radicalized until he called her from Syria earlier this year. He had told her he was going to Morocco for vacation.

“I wonder all the time if he suffered. I am proud that he had no victims," she told Maghreb TV.

Earlier this year the Belgian government issued an arrest warrant for Bilal Hadfi, a French citizen living in Brussels, but then lost track of him until the Nov. 13 attacks.

The New York Times recently reported that new details of the young man’s radicalization have surfaced from teachers at his school, whose concern grew after Hadfi cheered the January attack on newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris and posted radical messages on social media.

Bilal had reportedly not attended school since Feb. 24. School officials met with Hadfi’s mother and aunt on March 23, according to the Times. The women said he had left to be with relatives in Morocco because he was “fed up” with school.

On Hadfi’s Facebook page, he can be seen posing with a jihadist flag. The page also shows that Hadfi adopted the nom de guerre, Abu Moudjahid al-Belgiki, a surname which means "of Belgium."

Hadfi's mother indicated that she was encouraged by her son's behavior prior to his departure and insisted  she had no warning that her son had fled to fight with the Islamic State, the Associated Press reported.

Hadfi allegedly gave up smoking marijuana and drinking before leaving for Syria.

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H/T: New York Times, Associated Press