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‘Jihad Jane’ Given 10-Year Prison Sentence ‘Jihad Jane’ Given 10-Year Prison Sentence
(about 2 hours later)
PHILADELPHIA — A Pennsylvania woman who called herself “Jihad Jane” online and plotted to kill a Swedish artist was sentenced on Monday to 10 years in prison, after telling a judge she was once obsessed with jihad. PHILADELPHIA — A federal judge on Monday sentenced a Pennsylvania woman who called herself “Jihad Jane” to 10 years in prison for her part in a plan to murder a Swedish cartoonist whose images of the Prophet Muhammad offended Muslims.
The woman, Colleen R. LaRose, had faced the possibility of life in prison, but Judge Petrese B. Tucker accepted a government request to reduce the sentence, because of her cooperation with investigators. The woman, Colleen R. LaRose, who used “Jihad Jane” as an online alias, pleaded guilty to four charges, including conspiring to aid terrorists and to kill a person in a foreign country, after she plotted with jihadists she met on the Internet to kill the cartoonist, Lars Vilks, who depicted the prophet atop the body of a dog.
Ms. Larose, 50, of Pennsburg, told the judge that she used to think about jihad from morning to night, saying she was “in a trance.” Ms. LaRose, 50, of Pennsburg, Pa., near Philadelphia, went to Europe in 2008 with the intention of killing Mr. Vilks, but failed to meet up with the people who had encouraged the mission. She returned to the United States and was arrested after the plan was discovered.
She was sentenced to 10 years in prison plus five years of supervised release. She could be out in a little more than four years, having already served more than four years and with the potential for time off for good behavior. Judge Petrese B. Tucker of United States District Court said Monday that she was satisfied that Ms. LaRose would have carried out the killing if she had made the right contacts.
Prosecutors depicted Ms. LaRose as a “lonely and isolated” woman who sought excitement by joining the jihadist cause. She was flattered to get an assignment to kill a foe of Islam. “The court has no doubt that, given the opportunity, Ms. LaRose would have completed the mission,” the judge said at the end of the hearing, which lasted about 80 minutes.
Federal investigators say she participated in a 2009 conspiracy to target artist Lars Vilks, a Swedish cartoonist who depicted the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog. Muslim extremists in Iraq had offered a $100,000 reward for anyone who killed Mr. Vilks, who was never attacked. But her sentence was considerably lighter than the “decades” urged by prosecutors. Ms. LaRose will get credit for the 51 months she has already spent in custody.
The Justice Department said Ali Charaf Damache, who was living in Ireland, recruited Ms. LaRose and another American woman via jihadist websites. The defendant, a slight woman of 4-foot-9 who wore green prison overalls and a black head scarf, made a six-minute statement to the court, admitting that she had been inspired to engage in jihad, or Islamic holy war, after seeing coverage of Palestinians “screaming and crying.”
Mr. Damache married the other woman, Jamie Paulin Ramirez, in a Muslim ceremony on the day she arrived in Ireland from Colorado that same month. After contacting other jihadists on the Internet, Ms. LaRose said, she had been “honored” as an American woman to be asked to undertake a mission to kill Mr. Vilks. She said she had been won over by an unnamed individual who issued her instructions.
Ms. LaRose left the terrorist cell in Ireland after about six weeks not because she thought better of the murder plot, but because she “grew frustrated because her co-conspirators were not ready for action,” Jennifer Arbittier Williams, an assistant United States attorney, said on Monday. “All we did was talk about jihad,” she said, in a clear but sometimes emotional statement. “I did whatever he told me. I was in a trance.”
However, Mark Wilson, the public defender representing Ms. LaRose said she had come to understand the true, peaceful tenets of Islam and added that “there’s virtually no chance that she would ever be involved in violent jihad ever again.” But she said she has given up jihad after spending time with a devout Muslim family in Ireland who wanted no part in violent struggle.
Judge Tucker said she had no doubt Ms. LaRose, who stalked Mr. Vilks online, would have killed him if she had had the chance. “I don’t want to be into jihad no more,” she said. “It was wrong for me to even accept this assignment. I’m sorry about that.”
“The fact that out of boredom, or out of being housebound, she took to the computer and communicated with the people she communicated with, and hatched this mission, is just unbelievable,” Judge Tucker said. Mark Wilson, a federal public defender for Ms. LaRose, urged the judge to take Ms. LaRose’s life challenges into account. “I’m not asking you to excuse what she did, but asking the court to take that into consideration,” he said.
Mr. Wilson told the court that his client had been sexually abused by her father from the age of 8, had worked as a prostitute, and had abused drugs and suffered from mental illness over many years.
Mr. Wilson said Ms. LaRose never fired a gun and had “no real concept of where she was going to get a gun.”
The assassination plan was “more aspirational than operational,” Mr. Wilson said.
Jennifer Arbittier Williams, an assistant United States attorney, asked the judge to impose a long prison sentence to deter other people who may be contemplating terrorist acts.
“The other believers in violent jihad that were motivated by Ms. LaRose are still out there,” Ms. Williams said.
Ms. LaRose was working with “truly dangerous people” including one who was a member of the Taliban living in Pakistan, Ms. Williams said.
Zane David Memeger, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, called the sentence significant, and said it would help protect the community from any future threat posed by Ms. LaRose.
Mr. Wilson called the sentence “a just and reasonable decision.”