The Philadelphia-area woman who authorities say dubbed herself "Jihad Jane" online pleaded not guilty this morning in federal court to a four-count indictment charging her in an overseas terrorist plot. Colleen LaRose, 46, of Pennsburg, appeared in court wearing a green jumpsuit and corn rows in her blond hair. A May 3 trial date was set.
She was accused of conspiring with jihadist fighters and pledging to commit murder in the name of a Muslim holy war. Authorities say she wanted to kill a Swedish artist who had offended Muslims.
Authorities say she grew acquainted online with violent co-conspirators from around the world. They say she posted a YouTube video in 2008 saying she was "desperate to do something" to ease the suffering of Muslims.
She was arrested in October 2009 in Philadelphia while returning to the United States on October 15th.
LaRose spent most of her life in Texas, where she dropped out of high school, married at 16 and again at 24, and racked up a few minor arrests, records show.
After a second divorce, she followed a boyfriend to Pennsylvania in about 2004 and began caring for his father while he worked long hours, sometimes on the road. In 2005, she swallowed a handful of pills in a failed suicide attempt, telling police she was upset over the death of her father -- but did not want to die.
As she moved through her 40s without a job or any outside hobbies, her boyfriend said, she started spending more time online.
Though her boyfriend, Kurt Gorman, did not consider her religious, and she apparently never joined a mosque, LaRose had by 2008 declared herself "desperate" to help suffering Muslims in the YouTube video.
"In my view, she sort of slipped sideways into Islam... There may have been some seduction into it, by one or more people," said Temple University psychologist Frank Farley.
LaRose and Gorman shared an apartment with his father in Pennsburg, a quaint if isolated town an hour northwest of Philadelphia. Just days after the father died last August, she stole Gorman's passport and fled to Europe without telling him, making good on her online pledge to try to kill in the name of Allah, according to the indictment.
From June 2008 through her Aug. 23, 2009, departure, the woman who also called herself "Fatima Rose" went online to recruit male fighters for the cause, recruit women with Western passports to marry them, and raise money for the holy war, the indictment charged.
She had also agreed to marry one of her overseas contacts, a man from South Asia who said he could deal bombs and explosives, according to e-mails recovered by authorities.
He also told her in a March 2009 e-mail to go to Sweden to find the artist, Lars Vilks.
"I will make this my goal till I achieve it or die trying," she wrote back, adding that her blonde American looks would help her blend in.
Vilks questioned the sophistication of the plotters, seven of whom were rounded up in Ireland last week, just before LaRose's indictment was unsealed. Still, he said he was glad LaRose never got to him. Although she had written the Swedish embassy in March 2009 to ask how to obtain residency, and joined his online artists group in September, there is no evidence from court documents that she ever made it to Sweden.
Reuters; Sky News; Fox News.
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