Jihad Jane: First American Woman Terrorist

 Sounds like a movie. I must confess, Jihad Jane is a cool name for something, a movie, a record title, a rock band. Sort of like in the early 70's when Jane Fonda went to Hanoi, Vietnam to speak against the war. She was known as Hanoi Jane.

So, we have the first American born, American woman, American looking, American this and that, terrorist that al qaeda recruited for an terrorist attack-not in the US-- but in Sweden. She is Colleen LaRose. a white, slightly buiilt, divorced (no kids) woman from Ennis,Texas. She is 46 yrs. Jihad Jane then moved to Philadelphia and later posted her own plea via YouTube video 'to do something to help the Muslim people". As a result of that video, a jihadist contacted her in January 2009 and recruited a month later because of her pure American look that would let her blend in with many people. In this case, blond hair and blue eyes, that Nordic look. Her boyfriend stated that she seemed totally normal until after her father died in August, 2009, when she packed up and left.

I guess it is fairly easy to become an American jihadist. Al-qaeda is desperately seeking Americans to recruit--attack from within--.

She was part of a small group of jihadists that included four Islamic men and three women were ordered to kill Swedish artist Lars Vilks. What did he do? Well, he drew a portrait of Muhammad to test the limits of artistic expression ( his cartoon of the head of the prophet Mohammad on the body of a dog), which I guess the Muslim world was overly sensitive about--what else is new? That is his crime. That was in 2007. Since, Al-qaeda has put a $100,000 bounty on his life.

The attack was to have been completed in Sweden. Jihad Jane flew to Europe on August 23, 2009, to join the jihad group, begin training, and to seek out where Vilks was. Most of the training was in Cook, Ireland, of all places. As Irish police had arrested an jihad terrorist group there. Once training had been completed, she flew back home on Oct 16, when she was arrested. The one thing that caught the FBI's attention in monitoring jihad activity on the Internet were her postings that were very sympathetic to radical jihadists.

Killing the target would be her goal "till I achieve it or die trying," she wrote a south Asian suspect in March 2009, according to the indictment. Besides her assigned mission to kill Vilks, she was also recruiting American women with passports. Her past history indicates that she has had issues with the law. Her mug shot reveals a middle aged woman who appears troubled, angry.