The teenage girl, handcuffed to an iron railing, hangs her head as an Iraqi explosives expert cuts the trigger cords on a suicide vest strapped to her body. Gunshots echo in the distance as the white vest, carrying about 30lb (15kg) of explosives, is peeled off the 15-year-old, leaving her standing in the street in a sleeveless, orange frock.

The footage was taken in August, when police said they found Rania Ibrahim Mutlib in a side road in Baquba, north of Baghdad, having failed to detonate her charge.

When The Times met her in a police interrogation cell this week with her mother and grandmother, she claimed that she had been drugged and had no intention of killing herself or of becoming the 16th teenage girl bomber said to have struck in the past year.

Rania cracked her knuckles as she recounted what she said had happened in the run-up to her arrest.

“I came to Baquba on August 23 with my husband, who was looking for money from relatives for a hernia operation,” Rania, who was dressed in a traditional Islamic black robe and head scarf, said. The couple stayed the night at a house with a woman called Um Fatima and another cousin. In the morning, Rania said, she was given a can of peach juice and a sandwich, which made her feel dizzy. She believes that she was drugged.

“I realised it [the vest] was explosive because I saw the wires. [Um Fatima] told me not to touch it and it would not blow up. She said that we were just going to the market and then returning,” she said.

Rania said that Mohammed Hussein Mohammed Sameet, her 24-year-old husband, was not in the room when she was being dressed but that he bade her farewell. “He always used to tell me, ‘If we die, please choose me in heaven as your husband’, and that’s what he said to me before I left the house,” she said. “At the market Um Fatima started shopping. I decided to leave and find my mother’s house. I was afraid of this vest.”

Rania walked around the back-streets before catching the attention of a policeman. Police footage showed Rania with her back to an iron window frame. Her arms were linked through a railing and handcuffed. Visibly distraught, she was standing still as an explosives expert disarmed the vest and removed it.

She has since been paraded in front of media outlets as a propaganda tool to support Iraqi and American allegations that al-Qaeda in Iraq uses teenage girls to carry out suicide attacks. Brigadier-General Abd al-Kareem Khalaf, the spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, said that 15 girls, aged between 14 and 16, had been tricked into wearing explosive vests and blowing themselves up or were detonated remotely in Diyala province since November.

The commander had photographs showing what he said were the remains of a teenage bomber who died in Diyala about a month ago. “The girls are from villages. They’re easy to fool,” he told The Times at the police headquarters in Baquba, once an al-Qaeda stronghold.

Rania’s story is compelling, yet it is denied vehemently by her husband and his supposed cousin, a frail woman named by police as Um Fatima, who were arrested in connection with the alleged attempted attack. Asked whether she had wanted to kill herself, Rania told The Times: “No.” She added: “I did not think that I was going to be blown up.”

The teenager, who enjoys watching cartoons on television, particularly Tom and Jerry, left school aged 12. At about the same time, her father and an older brother were kidnapped, tortured and killed by Shia militants, leaving the family without any source of income.

Her mother, Bassad Selman Mohana, was encouraged to let her daughters marry. Mrs Mohana, 46, is accused of grooming Rania to become a bomber in return for money. She said that this was a lie.

The husband of Rania stood blindfolded and barefooted in a separate interrogation room. Speaking in a quiet voice, Mr Sameet, who worked on a farm, claimed that he had not seen Rania since February. “I swear to God I did not know where she had gone. Her mother took her,” he said.

He and Rania, who married in November, were living with his family in a village. Mr Sameet said that she did not get on with his sisters, which prompted her to leave. Rania said that they stayed together.

Mr Sameet said that the next time he heard about his wife was after her arrest, adding: “I love Rania despite what happened with her accusing me.”

In a third room a shrivelled woman named by police as Um Fatima denied being the wanted person, insisting that her name was Ibtisam Hamid and that she did not know Rania. Rania identified the woman as Um Fatima, whose identity card was found in the house where Rania said that she was given the explosives. General Khalaf is convinced that Um Fatima, Mr Sameet and the mother of Rania are lying. He said, however, that it was up to the judge to decide.

Lieutenant-General Hussein al-Awadi, the head of the 41,000-strong Iraqi National Police, said that al-Qaeda coerced uneducated teenage girls such as Rania to carry out bombings. Police have now been given metal detectors to scan women. In the past they would pass through checkpoints without being searched because the culture forbids a man to frisk a woman, which made them the perfect weapon.

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