E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
Colleen LaRose, known by the self-proclaimed alias 'Jihad Jane,'stands before Magistrate Judge Lynne A. Sitarski, left,, flanked by public defenders Mark Wilson and Ross Thompson, standing at right, is shown being arraigned on federal terrorism charges in Philadelphia, in a March 18, 2010 courtroom sketch.
When the flight from London landed in Philadelphia on Oct. 15, 2009, the pilot asked everyone to stay seated. A passenger was ill, he explained, and paramedics needed the aisles clear.
It didn't take long for passengers to realize the ruse. Federal agents entered the plane and made straight for the short woman in a full burka.
Colleen LaRose, the woman who called herself Jihad Jane, didn't resist when they handcuffed her.
FBI agents drove her to their offices two blocks from Independence Hall. When she complained of a headache, they gave her three Tylenol and a Sprite. Then they asked her to tell her story.
LaRose, a former teenage prostitute with a heavy history of drug abuse, mangled some facts. But mostly, she told the truth:
She became intrigued by Islam after a one-night stand with a Muslim man in 2007. She converted a short while later and became radicalized watching YouTube videos of atrocities against Palestinian children.
Online, she met a man who called himself Eagle Eye and who claimed to work for al-Qaida. Eagle Eye convinced her that she could travel to Sweden and use her appearance -- her white skin and her blonde hair -- to blend in. That way, she could get close enough to assassinate Lars Vilks, a Swedish artist who had blasphemed the Prophet Mohammad by drawing his head on a dog.
Colleen LaRose, a Pennsylvania woman who used the name "Jihad Jane," is shown in an undated video grab released by the Site Intelligence Group on March 10, 2010.
Agents asked her why she had returned to the United States. LaRose, 46, said she had been concerned about her mother. When she talked with her Pennsylvania boyfriend on the phone, he had said her mother was deathly ill. Not true, an agent assured her. Her mother was fine. It had been a trick intended to get LaRose back to the United States.
Did you give up your jihad because you got scared? an agent asked.
No, LaRose insisted. She gave up, she said, because Eagle Eye's men in Holland and Ireland moved too slowly. She felt "let down," she told the agents.
During her initial interviews, she didn't tell the agents that she also felt homesick. Or that, even as her host in Ireland -- the man who called himself Black Flag -- had driven her to the airport, she had feared she might be killed because she knew too much.
One agent pressed. Are you sure you didn't abandon the jihad because you got cold feet?
No, she insisted. And if they let her go, she told them, she planned a suicide attack against U.S. soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan.
The agents asked about Jamie Paulin Ramirez, another blonde American woman who had travelled to Europe with her son. LaRose said she lived with her briefly in Ireland but didn't know much about her.
The agents also asked about a U.S. passport they found in LaRose's luggage. It belonged to the Pennsylvania boyfriend. But it was expired. Where, an agent asked, was the valid one?
LaRose knew the answer: For safekeeping, she had mailed it months earlier to the youngest member of the conspiracy, a high school junior in Maryland named Mohammed Hassan Khalid.
She didn't give Khalid up. Instead, she lowered her eyes and asked for a lawyer.
The FBI kept her arrest quiet as they checked out her story.
'Sex slave'
About a week after LaRose's arrest in Philadelphia, Ramirez, the other blonde American woman, sat before a laptop in a southern Ireland apartment and let her emotions flow.
"I wish I was never stupid enough to come here," Ramirez typed in a note to herself.
/
Jamie Paulin Ramirez is seen in an undated family handout photo obtained from her family by the Leadville Herald at the time of her terrorism arrest in 2010.
A recent Muslim convert, Ramirez, 31, had arrived just six weeks earlier with her young son. On the very day they landed, she married Ali Damache, the man others knew as Black Flag.
He had wooed her by promising to teach her Arabic and Islam. But his lessons ended soon after they mastered the alphabet and a few basic prayers. He rarely spoke with her, except to bark orders about cooking and cleaning. She wanted to be a good Muslim wife, but if he wouldn't help her, how could she?
"This man has no intentions to make this relationship work, ever," she wrote.
"I am just a sex slave to him," she concluded. And later, she wrote: "… I cry because I always wanted a person in my life who could love me for who I am."
Ramirez felt trapped, afraid that if she returned to the United States her estranged mother might try to wrest custody of her son. Still, she took tentative steps to try to leave. When her husband was away, she began reconnecting by email with friends and family in Colorado.
Then in January, she learned she was pregnant by Damache. How could she possibly leave now?
Irish police answered the question two months later. On the morning of March 9, 2010, police raided the small flat in Waterford, detaining Ramirez, Damache and five of his associates for questioning. Later, Ramirez was whisked past a mob of journalists and into a closed courtroom. There, she stood before a judge for a brief session, bewildered beneath her burka.
Patrick Browne / Reuters file
Ali Charaf Damache, who used the online alias "Black Flag," is accompanied by Irish police for an appearance at Waterford District Court to be remanded into custody on March 13, 2010.
During questioning, she told the detectives what she knew, which turned out not to be much. She had come to Ireland to live with this man; he spoke of jihad but she couldn't offer specifics -- in part because Damache had never offered any himself.
Damache refused to cooperate. In fact, he played coy with the police, deflecting questions by posing his own. He almost seemed to relish the interrogation.
The discovery
Hours after the raids in Ireland, the FBI announced terrorism charges against LaRose, who remained in custody in the United States. U.S. officials called her by the online name she had chosen, Jihad Jane, and the story would lead the network news.
Near Baltimore, LaRose's teenage accomplice, Mohammed H. Khalid, found the indictment online. He had known the FBI was after LaRose, but he hadn't heard from her in seven months, since shortly after she had arrived in Ireland.
Now, he read the government's statement on the case:
/
Mohammed Khalid is seen in his 2011 high school yearbook senior portrait, from Mount Hebron High School in Ellicott City, Md.
"LaRose -- an American citizen whose appearance was considered to be an asset because it allowed her to blend in -- is charged with using the Internet to recruit violent jihadist fighters and supporters, and to solicit passports and funding," U.S. Attorney Michael Levy said in his statement. "It demonstrates yet another very real danger lurking on the Internet. This case also demonstrates that terrorists are looking for Americans to join them in their cause, and it shatters any lingering thought that we can spot a terrorist based on appearance."
Scanning the indictment, Khalid came to paragraph 18. It cited an unnamed co-conspirator and quoted excerpts from online posts that Khalid recognized.
He had sent them.
Not long after, FBI agents arrived at his parents' small apartment in Ellicott City, Md. They carried a search warrant. As some of the agents began rifling through the family's possessions, others took the teen into his bedroom.
"Tell us about it," one of the agents said to Khalid, who had turned 16. "There's no benefit in lying."
The FBI agents later showed Khalid lengthy transcripts of his chats in jihadi forums. They explained that LaRose was a former prostitute and drug addict. They told Khalid that everyone in the plot had turned on him. They told him that he would be smart to cooperate. They were, they said, the only friends he had left.
Khalid believed the agents when they said he was in big trouble. So he told them that he was no longer a jihadist. The people in those forums were misguided, he said. He had reformed.
The agents asked about the passports. LaRose had mailed them to Khalid before she left for Europe. Although he had sent one of the passports to Damache in Ireland, he had hidden the other at his school, he told the FBI. Now he claimed they were missing.
During the next few weeks, the boy met with agents a half dozen times, without a parent or attorney present. He believed he was a witness, not a suspect.
By then, Khalid had already acceded to his parents' wishes to seek counseling. A local Muslim scholar was teaching him that he was misinterpreting the Quran, and Khalid also met regularly with an imam who preached peace. He stopped posting on his blog. But it was all a front.
Khalid continued to live a double life, assembling a strong resume for college applications while secretly translating jihadi videos. He entered two high school writing contests. For one, he chose as a subject the Dalai Lama. For the other, Malcolm X.
The arrest
Months passed without any public word on the case, and that fall, Khalid began his senior year of high school.
In October, he aced the SAT college entrance exam and submitted an early decision application to prestigious Johns Hopkins University. By now, he had bought another laptop. He also found ways to sneak back into jihadi forums.
His writing turned darker.
That fall, Khalid struck up an online friendship with a troubled, 21-year-old neo-Nazi-turned-jihadist who lived in the Pittsburgh area.
During an online chat on Nov. 22, Khalid told the man that he had daydreamed about "doing martyrdom operations together in my school."
"Like Columbine?" the man asked.
"Na'am," Khalid said, using the Arabic word for yes. "It was like we both were in a big truck and had guns and we were shooting randomly at a huge crowd of kids. Subhan'Allah how great would it be. I live in Maryland … and the kids who study in my school proudly state that their parents work in NSA and FBI."
A few weeks after that exchange, news arrived inside a fat envelope.
"Congratulations!" began the letter from Johns Hopkins. Not only had Khalid won early admission but the school offered a full ride -- a $54,000 scholarship. It was quite an achievement for any student, let alone an immigrant who spent high school feeling alienated.
In June 2011, Khalid graduated from high school. A month later, while still 17, FBI agents quietly arrested him.
Why they chose then, months before he legally became an adult and months after his reference to Columbine, remains unclear. But that fall, shortly after his 18th birthday, the government indicted Khalid for his role in the Jihad Jane case.
The teenager became the youngest person to face U.S. terrorism charges.
The future
Three years have passed since Jihad Jane's arrest. And despite the guilty pleas by LaRose, Ramirez and Khalid, the Jihad Jane conspirators still await sentencing.
All confessed to conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. LaRose also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, lying to the FBI and attempted identity theft -- for stealing her boyfriend's passports.
The long delay in sentencing can be attributed to several factors: a continuing FBI investigation, extended psychological evaluations of some defendants, a government filing indicating that some evidence in the case is classified, and unexpected legal maneuvers in Ireland.
Ali Damache, the man who called himself Black Flag, caused a sensation in Irish legal circles by successfully contesting the police search of his Waterford apartment.
U.S. prosecutors have indicted him on terrorism charges and have asked Irish authorities to extradite him. Today, he remains in Ireland, awaiting trial on charges unrelated to the Jihad Jane conspiracy. His lawyers declined to comment.
The five acquaintances detained with Ramirez and Damache were released without facing any terrorism charges.
U.S. authorities won't say if they know the whereabouts of Eagle Eye, the al-Qaeda operative who instructed LaRose to kill, or Abdullah, the man who was supposed to train her in Amsterdam.
In U.S. District Court, sentencing for LaRose, Ramirez and Khalid has been postponed a handful of times. The most recent dates set: Ramirez and Khalid for early next year, and LaRose for May 7.
Until then, the three remain locked in the same federal prison in downtown Philadelphia, cut off from each other and from the tool that brought them together -- the World Wide Web.
LaRose has been held in solitary confinement for three years; even so, on rare outings, she says she has caught glimpses of Ramirez, though the two women haven't spoken.
Ramirez, who miscarried the baby she conceived with Damache, may face the shortest sentence of the three. Her crime: traveling to Ireland to meet Damache with a vague promise to live and train with jihadists. Authorities say she never knew about the plot to kill Vilks. Her young son now lives with her mother in Colorado.
JANE'S JIHAD is based on six months of reporting in Pennsylvania, Texas, Maryland, Colorado, Washington, D.C., and Ireland. The accounts, including the thoughts and actions of characters in the stories, are based on court records and other documents, many of them confidential, as well as interviews with people involved in the case. Reporter John Shiffman gained exclusive access to those documents and individuals. Many spoke only on condition of anonymity. In Ireland, the law forbids the government and defense lawyers from commenting until court proceedings are completed. In the United States, prosecutors do not typically comment before sentencing. The Reuters interview with Colleen LaRose, the woman who called herself Jihad Jane, is the only one she has granted.
"I'm not saying that I like being in prison but I am very grateful for this time to be able to reflect and study," Ramirez says in a statement provided by her court-appointed lawyer, Jeremy H. Gonzalez Ibrahim. "I was a parakeet. I just repeated what other people said."
Khalid's admission to Johns Hopkins was rescinded. His court-appointed lawyer, Jeffrey M. Lindy, says his client now realizes that his virtual friends did not love him the way his parents and teachers did. He also says Khalid regrets translating videos that may have led others astray.
"If you take away Jihad Jane and the ridiculous plan to kill the cartoonist" Vilks, says Lindy, "what you have is a teenager becoming fascinated with and learning about and adopting a radical ideology."
The lead prosecutor in the Jihad Jane conspiracy, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams, says she cannot comment on the cases until after sentencing. But FBI officials in Philadelphia emphasize that they cannot afford to discount possible terrorism suspects, no matter how incompetent or intelligent they might seem.
Once a plot matures, they say, authorities might be too late to stop an attack.
"The more sophisticated that capability becomes, we may not be able to control the outcome," said Richard P. Quinn, the FBI's assistant special agent in charge for counterterrorism. "If you get shot by someone with a seventh-grade education versus someone with a Harvard education, does it matter?"
'My destiny'
During an exclusive interview from jail, LaRose says she still believes that Islam saved her.
"I survived a lot of things that should have rightfully killed me," she says of drug use, rape and incest. "I also thought there was a purpose for me to be alive and then when I found Islam, I thought… ‘This is why I have lived so long.'"
U.S. sentencing guidelines suggest LaRose could be jailed for 30 years to life.
Her intended victim, the Swedish artist Lars Vilks, says he believes LaRose has served enough time already.
"They should let her go," Vilks says. "Now that she is known, they can keep an eye on her."
Andrew Lampard / Reuters
Ollie Avery Mannino, a counselor who met Colleen LaRose in 1980 and helped her confront her father about childhood rapes.
Ollie Avery Mannino, the counselor who helped LaRose confront her father about childhood rapes three decades ago, also urges leniency.
Mannino says LaRose's harrowing past doesn't excuse her conduct as an aspiring terrorist. "But when you think about punishment, you have to consider the whole person," Mannino says.
"I don't want people to have sympathy for Colleen," she says. "I want them to try empathy."
Today, in jail, LaRose expresses few regrets. "I did everything I did for the love of my ummah", the Muslim community, she says. "Whatever happens to me, it's my destiny. Whatever time they give me, it's already predestined for me. So I'm not worried."
With limited access to media in prison, LaRose says she hadn't heard that the U.S. government held up her case as one that "underscores the evolving nature of violent extremism" and demonstrates a "very real danger lurking on the Internet."
LaRose also hadn't realized that her arrest caused so much buzz back in 2009 -- that Katie Couric had opened the CBS Evening News with her story, declaring that prosecutors were warning that this "petite woman from the Philadelphia suburbs" now "represents the new face of terrorism."
"Wow," LaRose says, almost tickled by the characterization. Then, after a momentary pause: "Well, they're right."
Confined to a cell, often for 23 hours a day, LaRose has nonetheless found a new path toward love.
Read previous installments
Part 1: From abuse victim to terrorist wannabe
Part 2: A vow is confirmed; a terror plot grows
Part 3: The FBI visits; plot's wheels set in motion
She has discovered a makeshift Internet that exists within the walls of the federal prison in Philadelphia: If she scoops enough water from her toilet bowl, LaRose can communicate with other inmates by speaking through the sewer pipes -- they call it "talking on the bowls."
By talking on the bowls, LaRose fell for a new man. She knows little about him other than what he has told her. But she finds him wise, compassionate and righteous. He is not a Muslim but promises to convert when he gets out. That way, they can marry and be happy.
Colleen LaRose believes him.
More from Open Channel:
Follow Open Channel from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook
Leave a Comment:
How do you come from a free country and embrace Islam and turn on your country. Treason should be punishable by DEATH. Take Jihad Whack job Jane and the 16 y/o piece of garbage and dispose of them. No more wastes of court time or lawyers, just out them and make an EXAMPLE of them. Let the rest of the sympathizers on the World Wide Web know they will be outed and let them assemble in caves like their dead leader hiding out and plotting. Time to clean house America and rid us of this filth!!!
Yes, Jay, let's show those Islamofascists just how free we are by ignoring due process requirements and executing people for non-capital crimes. Brilliant suggestion!
No way! Give her life in prison. Otherwise she'll return to her life of crime and plotting terrorism.
Some people are just bad to the bone.
I'm sorry for the tragedies that befell this woman so early in life but many people deal with tragedies all through their lives and continue or change to work towards good. It would seem that Ms. LaRose doesn't know the difference between good and bad and seems to have some story book fantasy in her head about how life could be with a happily ever after ending.
She needs help and a lot of it but she needs to get it in her new "home" with the "pipes" internet. From the sounds of it, she could be talked into doing almost anything if she thought that it would somehow make her a hero or buy her happiness. In other words, she continues to be a danger to others.
There are a lot of people who would have killed (so to speak) for the admission let alone a full ride to Johns Hopkins. Khalid must have been brilliant to have received this award. Too bad he had zero common sense and compassion. It has cost him his young life. What a horrible mess of many lives. The only redeeming fact is that they were all failures in their quests to murder.
Individuals that are either abused, insecure or feel impotent, can easily be sold security (like a beautiful hereafter etc.) and potency (destroying or controlling entities’ that are offensive). There will always be vulnerable individuals to gullible rationals (religion).
kaybeetoys
Some people are just bad to the bone.
Yep, and for their parts in the invasion of Iraq george bush, dick cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and other are still free men. How ironic. Only in America.
And yet, under our system of tolerance and personal freedom, you're free to spout any drivel you want. How ironic. Only in America.
In the end, our best weapon against radicalism is to remain true to the values that the radicals fear most. In doing so, we cannot deny to them the fundamental tenets of law we promote and protect, beginning with the right to due process. All three of them deserve fair trials and, when convicted, fair sentences. Neither the extent of their involvement nor the outcome of their actions constitutes capital crimes.
Here the best way to deal with terrorist. return the favor. go into mecca and medina, plant a bunch of bombs in important places, and announce that every terrorist attack equals one less building. of course you give people time to evacuate, but since these terrorist obviously value their history more than human lives I think they won't cross us on that one
Some of these people just don't deserve due process and need to made examples of....not sayin' in this case but maybe....they play by their own rules yet we give them lawyers, court hearings, a room, 3 meals/day.....bin Laden got what he deserved, none of this take him alive and bring him to court.....I k now he's an extreme example......just my thoughts.....carry on....
You are an idiot. This sounds more like Three's Company them some dark forces that were guaranteed to kill people.
No one was in danger, and this radical group bent on whatever it is they were bent on decided killing a cartoonist was the way to prove that. This is just another example of the government freaking out because there might be the tiniest possibility something might happen somewhere, or rather trying desperately to freak us out to validate their existence.
Drug addicts, one who married someone they never met, and kid who still lives with his parents could easily do something bad, but come on, they certainly aren't the poster people for terrorism. Just people who are mad at the world and seem more comfortable typing about how badass they are then actually doing it. And our government right now seems to be perfectly content with locking up people because of their words just in case they develop into action. Which in this case seems extremely unlikely for this group of misfits.
I remember an America where words were protected by the Constitution. Now they will get thrown into solitary confinement for an unidentified amount of time, doesn't matter if you are a kid or an idiot, talk/type about something they don't like and you will pay.
And it is beyond ridiculous to give these kids the same moniker as Bin Laden, terrorist. By definition, a terrorist has to actual terrorize people through random violence. None of them are terrorists, like calling someone a murder because they talked about killing their teacher. Dumb.
It would seem from this article many of the American converts to Islam are social misfits looking for a way out of their self imposed dilema by embracing another religion, only to fail in their quest.
The women are mentally ill, victims of sexual abuse from a young age. They are extremely naive, and because they have been powerless most of their lives, feel like they should strike out against the powers that be. These women are insane, and like many insane people, are not surprisingly dangerous and need help in the form of indefinite incarceration. I have no pity for the men in this story. Khalid of course is some young turd who got sucked into his own version of communism. Most kids go through a phase where they identify with something bad before wisening up. Still, he should be shown the extent of the powers that he thought he could go up against when he actually hoped to start a shoot-out at school. Imagining it is one thing, taking steps to make it happen is another. There is no need to demonize them or take retribution against countries in the middle east--these people have little or no connection at all with the middle east beyond what's in their misguided heads.
Flush Black Flag down the toilet, and keep the others in prison for a long, long, time.
For all yo knuckleheads who are excusing away these kids actions on the basis of bad childhoods and being stupid and easily misled just reflect on the massacre in Newtown by someone who was not manipulated.
@ndscaper
Individuals that are either abused, insecure or feel impotent, can easily be sold security (like a beautiful hereafter etc.) and potency ("destroying" or controlling entities’ that are offensive). There will always be vulnerable individuals to "gullible rationals" and/or (religion).
I'm sorry, but getting tired. I read a lot of this "stuff" and really all of you are POS's, I've been thru all this sh-- before. Any of you fuc-- every had your mom call and ask to make it with you, how about getting into the military to avoid a felony for one ounce of pot, back then I would go into the airport(back then you couldn't wear your uniform), and boy that was so much fun. Back then we were spit on, pissed on, and generally fuc-- in the US. I was in the time frame for Viet Nam(never went), but what you people don't know is what we did(of course nothing). Now you worthless fuc-- get a hard on over stupid sh-- like this and how fuc--- up we are or they are. I've gone thru a sh--load of sh-- and am now getting to old to do anything. Anyway make sure you take care of the kids, their doing the killing now and don't spit or piss on them(they won't like it, but they won't kill you either as they are on your side and will protect you worthless @!$%#s. Have a Nice Day
I've lived in the south all my life. I've always heard people said to beware of the (blonde) blue eyed devil. Maybe these people knew something that I didn't. Makes sense to me now.
@ Jay, any religious zealot is a truly SCARY individual. Typically they're justifying their wants/desires with ambiguously fiction written thousands of years ago. No matter the faith, the scariest people are those who buy the lies told to them.
Exactly--it was radical Hinduism that "martyred" Gandhi, radical Christians that murder abortion doctors and demonstrate at Soldiers' funerals, radical Mormonism that put Jeffs behind bars for life...we could on with examples of radicalism in every faith everywhere. If you want to embrace religion as a means to enrich your personal life and help you deal with doubts and insecurities, fine; if you want to use it as a means to force your will on others, exploit them or subjugate them, then we have a serious problem.
Well said!!! Freedom of religion should not include freedom to ram your religion down the throats of others.
Losers and idiots worshipping the moon god. What a bunch of bull@!$%#,I am reminded that Germany has outlawed nazi ideology,so Islam?
Err, sorry Vilks but I don't want my tax dollars to go towards "keeping an eye on her". How about we strip her of US citizenship and ship her to your place so YOU can keep an eye on her?
She'd be even more dangerous.
No one's going to keep an eye on her, out of the US, yet she can harm US citizens from anywhere.
Now THAT is the best solution I have ever heard of!
like so many abused women she now believes a jailobird she met talking through sewr pipes that he is the one who really loves her. How pathetic......
"talking on the bowls"....oh, my! Expanded my understanding of the expression "Talking s##t!!"
These people are the perfect targets of terrorists. They need to feel important to themselves and to someone else, and are compliant enough to not question anything.
The young boy may be salvageable, but LaRose is a lost cause.
Let her out, and she'll still try to become "important' and infamous.
Actually, of the three I think Khalid is the LEAST salvageable. The youthful mind is more likely to embrace radical concepts and less open to reason or rational counter-arguments. He's lied successfully and re-embraced radicalism once--I could never trust him not to do so again.
Khalid is a monster we as a society created. He was bullied and hazed in school for being muslim and foreign looking. Some people can only take so much at that age. Being brilliant just compounds those emotions. He wanted to belong to something, have a purpose and be accepted by his peers. His American peers would never accept him. High School kids are some of the cruelest people you will ever meet. So it doesn't surprise me this was the outcome. The fact it was a facet of his religion just made the indoctrination easier. At this point I'm not sure he can be saved. He's been imprisoned by that same system for years. He's lied about reforming in the past. On the other hand he's a nerd who has never been laid and he could have just been @!$%#ing around on the internet for attention. Who knows? Maybe after a few years in prison, when he has had time to mature (around 25 and with regular psychiatric treatment) he may truly change his mind. Make no mistake though, we as society are responsible for creating him.
The two women on the other hand are idiots. Both have been abused and have all the approval and intimacy seeking personality traits that go with that. It would take years of counseling to fix them. Both of them seem pretty stupid. The one that married Black Flag thought she could have a relationship like she's read about in Cosmo with a radical fundamentalist. Stupidest thing I ever heard. I'm unhappy because he turned me into a sex slave that cooks and cleans. He's Muslim, you know the deal when you signed up moron. He's not going to respect you and have a perfect relationship. For that I blame Cosmo, Adele (pop culture), and feminism for making her think she can have a normal western relationship with a terrorist. She's too stupid to understand why that doesn't work.
Likely they will all have to stay in prison and psychiatric (de-programming) treatment for a very long time
Don't you just love the liberals asking for leniency for Jihad Jane? Her councilor and the intended murder victim. The Quran tells muslims that it is their duty to lie and mislead to infidels. These liberal clowns think these dirtbags are just like us.
You are so out of touch with reality that it is pathetic. You need to get a clue. You are so full of misinformed and misguided hate that you are as bad as the Islamic extremists.
Oh Ron, my, my, my, I am a flaming liberal and I want her locked up until she's toothless and doddering. I would rather have my taxes pay for 3 squares and a cot instead of the havoc she could reek on the outside, she is a menace. You really don't a clue what a Liberal really is, check out the dictionary for a clue, might surprise you.
Michael--odd that you would choose Dillinger as your meme--but I still agree with you. It's natural that her counselor would show empathy--which she clearly differentiated from sympathy--and the intended victim has chosen to as well. I think HE'S deluded--there's no guarantee that we would be able to "keep an eye on her" well enough to prevent her from re-entering the Jihadist network and carrying out her original mission. If Islam "saved" her, her misinterpretation of its teaching will likely spell her doom. It's a shame her conversion wasn't via a non-Jihadist or another religion or source altogether. While I can empathize with the circumstances that lead her here, I agree with skyparrot that she should remain incarcerated until either she is beyond the physical capability to do others harm or the jihadists are neutralized once and for all. BTW, I'm conservative--which shows our political philosophies are not the divide the talking heads would like us to believe.
Please enlighten us Ron, you know these two are liberals, HOW?????????? Oh, wait, they are just in your deluded mind.
Look up the term 9/11 Liberal.
I'm a liberal and I want them locked up for as long as possible. I also want her to have regular psychiatric treatments. Like any other cult they have been brainwashed by Islam. Radicalism and religious fanaticism is like any other mental illness. All it will take is years of therapy to reverse it. Even then I probably wouldn't want them free and on the streets.
Does it make me a hippy liberal because I want to try to fix the crazy bastards rather then summarily execute them? Yeah, that makes me a real dick, huh?
Lanikai- what you know about liberals evidently came from Jihad Jane's toilet bowl. I don't want her out. This poor woman is damaged goods-damaged by a horrible life, but damaged nonetheless. The kid, who is obviously very bright and disciplined is far scarier, though. He's already proven to be deceptive and sociopathic. Blowing up kids in Maryland because their parents are government workers? You can put his name on a prison cell right now.
Well, I'd say it's not just because their parents are government workers. I'm sure most of them are @!$%#s. Remember what High School was like? He wanted to attack the same people that alienated him for being different. He likely can't be saved but that doesn't mean they shouldn't try to deprogram him with therapy. A couple of years in prison reflecting on how he got there will make most people question their faith in anything. He's still young so there is a chance.
Using a name like that looks like an obvious entrapment operation.
Huh? Mind explaining?
execute all of them...soon...and make examples out of them....but the usa has no guts...except to american gi's on trial whwn they do something wrong...were screwed again...thanks obama
What are you babbling on about? Who are the American GIs who have been so brutally oppressed by the judicial system?
Mike did you wife burn your breadfast again and blame Obama. Looks to me like everything that is wrong in your sad life you blame on Obama. Poor poor you.
Sad woman, sad life, 30+ years not so sad. Lock her up for life, she's a menace so says this flaming liberal.
Lets just shoot them ad stop all the fuss!!!
Does "all the fuss" mean actually following the relevant laws?
Several thoughts come to mind:
1. LaRose and especially Ramirez have learned the sad fact that radical Islam should be re-named Misogynism. The men who lead the movement view anyone who doesn't share their radical agenda as unworthy of any emotion but contempt and view women as chattel to be used as they wish.
2. The leaders of radical Islam always choose the gullible and easily manipulated to carry out their "missions of martyrdom"--somehow they, themselves, never strap on a vest and join their victims. Curious how their faith only extends so far.
3. While I may feel empathy toward these women, the one emotion I will never feel--for them OR Khalid--is trust, especially for Khalid. Once you have cast your lot with terrorists and embraced their sick creed and have lied successfully about it, how can anyone again trust your professions of reform? I don't want to find out they've lied yet again when innocents die.
4. The ongoing religious strife underscores the ridiculous aspect of blind faith. When religion--of ANY type--becomes radicalized, no one, even of their own faith, is safe. Those who get "martyred" along with them have no right of choice, no voice in what happens, and lose their lives in the furtherance of a cause in which they may have no interest, no faith, and nothing to gain but death. The arrogance of the entire concept of "shared martyrdom" these sick whackos embrace is beyond understanding or contempt.
I was no great fan of John Lennon's, but in his song "Imagine" I think he got it absolutely right.
" The leaders of radical Islam always choose the gullible and easily manipulated to carry out their "missions of martyrdom"--somehow they, themselves, never strap on a vest and join their victims. "
I'm not sure if this is actually correct. I seem to recall reading some studies that showed that many (most?) suicide bombers tended to be more highly-educated and that they actively pursued opportunities to commit suicide attacks rather than being coerced into participating in them.
Yes, many are, as is Khalid. But the senior leaders, whether Bin Laden, Al Zwahari, or others of their ilk do not, even when their leadership roles are over. No matter how educated the martyr, he/she is still a dupe for those who happily send them out to be blown to red mist or murder others but somehow seem to go on with THEIR lives--until they are either caught or killed.
Well that's very true, but it's also rather universal: those who lead don't generally expect to die in pursuit of their goals.
Gimme a break!
I think I sense a con pulling a con on another con.
The uneducated and the misinformed are easily led astray. -- John Mellencamp
There is stupid and then there is terminally stupid. These women are terminally stupid, might as well keep them locked up for life, they are too stupid to live in a free society.
these nutcakes are no different from the tea partiers, they are delusional, anti-intellectual and basically psychotic schizo at best. put them together and lock them out on some island and dont let them get away lest their genes mingle with sane people.
The fact that she has to talk sexy with her head in the toilet will provide hours of giggles for me tonight.
Yus,
Uh I don't see any tea bagers strapping on vests and killing people.
Stupid comment.
So she converted to Islam after a one-night stand. Glad to know there was a deep abiding religious commitment. Muslims are the biggest hypocrites in the world; even surpassing fundamentalist Christians.
Clearly, addictive and weak-minded folks are good candidates for terrorist recruitment. This woman (Jihad Jane) clearly has absolutely zero ability to analyze what someone is saying to her. Talk about needy. She is the definition of the term.
Wonder if Ted Turner would be interested in her? She must have learned from Hanoi Jane ----
Thank God the majority of Americans are too stupid to be successful terrorists!
some people are just stupid. all the losers in this article fit that category.
A woman who had a tough early life, since had time to reflect and communicate through the sewer pipes and has a solid plan for her future.
Further proof that you can't fix stupid.