“Jihad Jane” And Her Secret Life As A Terrorist
Colleen R. LaRose A.K.A.: “Jihad Jane” and “Fatima Rose”
Jihad Jane was arrested on Oct. 16, 2009, in Philadelphia. Ms LaRose had exchanged emails for over 15 months to recruit fighters for “violent jihad”. An indictment filed in federal court on March 4, 2010 charges LaRose and five un-indicted co-conspirators with recruiting Westerners on the Internet to wage violent jihad in foreign countries. A Department of Justice statement said Ms LaRose and five others “recruited men on the internet to wage violent jihad in South Asia and Europe, and recruited women on the Internet who had passports and the ability to travel to and around Europe in support of jihad”.
LaRose, a US citizen born in 1963, is charged with “conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, making false statements to a government official and attempted identity theft.” The indictment further charges that LaRose received a direct order to kill a Swedish resident. She traveled to Sweden and tracked the target with the intent of carrying out the murder, according to the FBI.
Colleen LaRose, who dubbed herself “Jihad Jane,” was so intent on waging jihad, authorities said, that she traveled to Sweden to kill an artist in a way that would frighten “the whole Kufar (non Muslim) world.” Law enforcement authorities identified the target as cartoonist Lars Vilks, who had drawn a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog.
Seven people were arrested in Ireland in connection with the plot, according to US law enforcement. Irish police said that those arrested were two Algerians, two Libyans, a Palestinian, a Croatian, and an American woman married to one of the Algerian suspects.
The Making of Jihad Jane
Of all the stories concerning the radicalization of Westerners, none may be as intriguing as the case of Colleen R. Larose. Ms. Larose is known to authorities as well as online terrorist recruiters as “Jihad Jane” and lesser known as her other alias “Fatima Rose”.
What makes her case so interesting? She does not fit the mold of your ordinary radicalized Islam covert. She is a middle aged American woman with no links or roots in the Muslim world. She never attended a mosque or any other religious establishments. She was converted to Islam through the Internet.
Blond and green-eyed, Ms. LaRose looks the part of a soccer mom more than the Western conception of an Islamist extremist. According to recent interviews with her ex-boyfriend who lived with her until August of last year and has known her since 2005 the whole ordeal seems like something out of a book rather than what LaRose appeared to be in what he saw as her real life. Her activities apparently came as a surprise to her boyfriend Kurt Gorman.
Gorman stated that LaRose mainly was a homebody that helped care for his father that passed away in August 2009. After the funeral she disappeared along with her exes Gorman’s pass port. The passport was to be used by one of her conspirators, actually the one she agreed to marry in South Asia.
The Internet Jihad Movement
Apparently LaRose didn’t need a radical cleric at the local mosque to radicalize her beliefs. She became a sympathizer to the Radical Muslim cause by befriending others that shared her deranged fascination with the jihad movement.
In June, 2008, LaRose posted a comment on YouTube under the user name “JihadJane” saying that she was “desperate to do something somehow to help” suffering Muslims, according to the federal indictment.
One thing that is interesting here is that it appears that LaRose had some issues in her life that made her vulnerable to the ideas of radical extremists that scour the Internet in hopes of finding the next suicide bomber or 911 style hijacker. In 2005, LaRose attempted to commit suicide, according to a police report filed at the time. She was depressed about the death of her father, the official report from Pennsburg Police Officer Michael Devlin stated. Records show she was arrested twice in 1997: once for DWI and once for passing a bad check in the San Antonio, Texas, area. She moved from Texas to Pennsylvania in 2004. An investigator with the Ferris police department in rural Texas said that Colleen R. LaRose was arrested in February 2001 and April 2002 on charges of public intoxication. Investigator Sam Love said LaRose paid her fines in city court after both arrests.
The Federal Indictment describes her as someone who became gradually radicalized as she trolled the Internet and communicated with Islamist sources around the world. Somewhere inside the Internet world a radical from Africa answered her comment about wanting to do something to help the suffering of Muslims. In one posting on a social networking site, she wrote about marrying a Muslim man overseas.
In February 2008, she wrote: “Asalamalakum [peace be unto you]. You make me so happy, I cannot put into words. Inshallah [God willing] one day I will be at your side as your wife and never leave your side.” From December 2008 to October 2009, LaRose engaged in electronic communication with the five co-conspirators about their shared desires to wage jihad and become martyrs, according to the indictment. Her electronic communications revealed that she had agreed to marry a co-conspirator in order to allow him entry into Europe. By August 2009, she was in Sweden preparing to attack Vilks. According to the FBI, she told co-conspirators in an e-mail that her appearance would allow her to blend in “with many people,” so that she could achieve “what is in my heart”.
This Changes Event Changes Everything As To Profiling Possible Radicalized Homegrown Converts
This case creates a big change in the way that America will look at the terrorist movement. The fact that she is a middle aged, White, green-eyed blond American female with no roots in Muslim Religion and never was known to visit mosques let alone become a terrorist that was willing to give her life for her radicalized beliefs.
What makes this new phenomenon so scary is that who would look at her and suspect a bomb to be strapped to her body. With her American pass port she could travel abroad easily without any suspicion. This case kills the premise that you can identify a terrorist by appearance. It shows that not only are terrorist using the Internet to recruit but they are becoming successful at recruiting Americans to carry out their Jihad.
