A GRAND jury in Pennsylvania has indicted Colleen Renee LaRose, a US citizen, in the same plot to murder a Swedish cartoonist in which seven Muslims in Ireland were allegedly involved.
Ms LaRose is accused of using the aliases “Fatima LaRose” and “Jihad Jane” to contact Muslim extremists on the internet in 2008 and 2009. In her first posting on YouTube, in June 2008, “JihadJane” said she was “desperate to do something to help” suffering Muslims.
Ms LaRose travelled to Ireland in August 2009, where she allegedly discussed the plot with some of the suspects detained in Cork and Waterford on Tuesday. She returned to the US, where she was arrested last October.
The “Jihad Jane” case is most alarming to US authorities because, in her own words, Ms LaRose (46), “blends in” in Western society.
One of five co-conspirators, listed only by number and place of residence in the indictment, forwarded a questionnaire to her for potential female recruits. It began: “Are you a European citizen and do you live in Europe?”
Michael Levy, the US attorney for Eastern Pennsylvania who signed the 11-page indictment, said in a statement that the LaRose case “shatters any lingering thought that we can spot a terrorist based on appearance”.
A twice-divorced high school drop-out with a police record for writing bad cheques and drunk driving in Texas, Ms LaRose lived with her boyfriend Kurt Gorman in a suburb of Philadelphia, where she had looked after Gorman’s ageing father before his death. She is believed to have “self-indoctrinated” through the internet.
In an interview with CNN, Mr Gorman said he was shocked by the revelations in the indictment. “It doesn’t sound like the person I knew,” he said. “Why would you take care of somebody if you wanted to hurt people?”
Mr Gorman said Ms LaRose had no hobbies and spent most of her time on the computer. He came home from work one night after his father died to find she had left, without explanation. He felt hurt and angry and later noticed that his passport was missing.
A month later the FBI called on him and Mr Gorman testified before the grand jury that indicted Ms LaRose in November.
Was Ms LaRose capable of plotting a murder? “She wasn’t a rocket scientist,” Mr Gorman said. “She was limited in her capacity. I don’t know how much of this she could do on her own.”
In e-mails, Ms LaRose and alleged co-conspirators in south Asia (believed to be Pakistan), Europe and the US appeared to target Lars Vilks, the Swedish artist whose cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed led to death threats from Islamic extremists.
On September 30th, 2009, Ms LaRose e-mailed a co-conspirator identified as “a resident of a South Asian country”, saying it would be “an honour great pleasure to die or kill for” him, and that “only death will stop me here that i am so close to the target!”
Vilks told the Associated Press he wasn’t sure whether to take the plot against him seriously. Ms LaRose appears to have been an amateur. Although the group reportedly had no links with al- Qaeda, US authorities say at least one of her co-conspirators was genuinely dangerous.
Ms LaRose has been charged with one count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, one of conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, one of making a false statement to government officials, and one of attempted identity theft She will be arraigned in court within days and risks life in prison if convicted on all counts.