Taking things a little seriously

Charlie Savage has an article in The New York Times about someone who takes their religion a little too seriously:

A Pennsylvania woman who called herself JihadJane was tied to an alleged assassination plot against a Swedish cartoonist who depicted the prophet Muhammad atop the body of a dog. In an indictment unsealed on Tuesday, federal prosecutors accused Colleen R. LaRose, an American from the Philadelphia suburbs, of linking up through the Internet with militants overseas and plotting to carry out a murder.
Ms. LaRose, 46, was arrested in Philadelphia in October, but her case was kept under seal. Although the indictment does not identify the target, a law enforcement official said her case was linked to the arrests of seven Muslims in Ireland in connection with a scheme to kill the cartoonist, Lars Vilks. A group linked to al-Qaeda had put a $100,000 bounty on his head for the cartoon, which the group perceived as an insult to Islam. European news reports said Irish police, who arrested the four men and three women, had coordinated the operation with the United States.
A police statement issued in Dublin said the Irish arrests followed a joint investigation by police in Ireland, the United States, and “a number of European countries,” and that the suspects were being held at four police stations in an area about 100 miles south of Dublin, under a law that allowed for them to be held for up to seven days for questioning.
News reports in Ireland said that the seven being held were from Algeria, Croatia, Palestine, Libya, and the United States, and were between their mid-20’s and late 40’s. The Irish Times reported that American investigators believe that the leader of the group was an Algerian who has been living in Ireland for the past ten years.
A Justice Department spokesman would not confirm whether Ms. LaRose had been involved with the plot. Mark T. Wilson and Rossman D. Thompson, federal public defenders in Philadelphia who are representing Ms. LaRose, declined to comment. Michael L. Levy, the United States attorney for Eastern Pennsylvania, said in a statement the case illustrated how terrorists were looking for American recruits who could blend in. “It shatters any lingering thought that we can spot a terrorist based on appearance,” he said. Ms. LaRose is white, with blond hair and green eyes. Ms. LaRose was born in Michigan and later lived in Texas and Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.
The indictment said that, in mid-2008, Ms. LaRose, using the aliases JihadJane and Fatima LaRose, began posting on YouTube and other Internet sites messages about her desire to help Muslims. A MySpace profile for a woman who refers to herself as JihadJane displays pictures of bloodshed and violence in the Middle East scrawled with messages like Palestine We Are With You and Sympathize With Gaza.
By early 2009, court papers said, she was exchanging email messages with unidentified co-conspirators in Southeast Asia and Europe and expressed a desire to become a martyr for an Islamist cause. The indictment refers to email messages in which a conspirator, citing how Ms. LaRose’s appearance and American passport would make it easier for her to operate undetected, allegedly directed her in March of 2009 to go to Sweden to help carry out a murder. She agreed to do so, writing, “I will make this my goal till I achieve it or die trying,” the indictment says. She and another unnamed American later posted online solicitations for money for that project, the document said.
Ms. LaRose had attracted the government’s attention by then. She was questioned by FBI agents on 17 July 2009, and falsely told them that she had never solicited money online for terrorism, had never used the alias JihadJane, and had never made postings on a terrorist Web site, court papers say.
Despite drawing the FBI’s attention, the indictment says Ms. LaRose traveled to Europe in August, joined an online community hosted by the intended Swedish victim in September, and performed online searches to track him. She apparently never attempted to carry out the killing. The indictment also says Ms. LaRose recruited other people on the Internet to wage or support jihadist attacks.

Rico says that Montgomery County is pretty close to home; he may have to start packing again, if this sort of thing keeps up...