By Divya Talwar Producer, BBC Asian Network
"Liberte!" - That was the last word spoken by the heroine of Churchill's elite spy network before being executed by her Nazi captors.
On 13 September 1944, the glamorous British agent, code named "Madeline," was shot dead at Dachau concentration camp.
Despite being tortured by the Gestapo during 10 months of imprisonment, she had revealed nothing of use to her interrogators.
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She joined Winston Churchill's sabotage force, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), and became the first female radio operator sent into France in 1943, with the famous instruction to "set Europe ablaze".
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As her spy circuit collapsed, her commanders urged her to return, but she refused to abandon what had become the principal and most dangerous post in France because she did not want to leave her French comrades without communications.
For three months, she single-handedly ran a cell of spies across Paris, frequently changing her appearance and alias until she was eventually captured.
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Born in Moscow to an Indian father and an American mother, she was a direct descendant of Tipu Sultan, the renowned Tiger of Mysore, who refused to submit to British rule and was killed in battle in 1799.
Her father was a Sufi Muslim who moved his family first to London and then to Paris, where Noor was educated.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12151715
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