Colleen LaRose

Colleen Renée LaRose (born June 5, 1963), also known as Jihad Jane and Fatima LaRose, is an American citizen who was convicted and sentenced to 10 years for terrorism-related crimes, including conspiracy to commit murder and providing material support to terrorists.

She had married at age 16 and never finished high school. After a quick divorce, she later married again at age 24, and divorced after a decade. She had moved from Texas in 2004 to live in Pennsburg, Pennsylvania. After personal losses and attempting suicide in 2005, she converted to Islam.

She was prosecuted in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

LaRose was taken into custody in October 2009, and her arrest was made public on March 9, 2010, after seven alleged co-conspirators were arrested in Ireland (five of whom were later released by the Irish authorities). Among those arrested in Ireland (later released by the Irish authorities, but then arrested by U.S. authorities and charged as a co-defendant with LaRose in a superseding indictment) was Jamie Paulin Ramirez, an American woman from Colorado, whose parents say she was recruited by LaRose. Specifically, LaRose was charged with trying to recruit Islamic terrorists to wage violent Jihad and of plotting to murder the Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who had drawn a cartoon of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad. She faced a maximum penalty of life in prison, and a $1-million fine. She was convicted on January 6, 2014, and sentenced to 10 years.

Background LaRose was born in Michigan and grew up in Detroit. She has one sister, Pamela, who is three years older. Their parents divorced when Colleen was 3. She was raped by her biological father from about age 7 to age 13, when she ran away and became a prostitute.

LaRose was briefly married at the age of 16 to Sheldon Barnum, who was 32 at the time. A miscarriage left her unable to have children.

LaRose moved to the Philadelphia area in 2004 to live with her new boyfriend, Kurt Gorman, whom she had met in Ennis, Texas, when he was on a business trip. She helped him care for his aging father. She lived with Gorman for about five years. During that period, she apparently converted to Islam and became radicalized,

Conversion to Islam Her interest in Islam was sparked by a Muslim man she met in a bar in Amsterdam. After returning to Pennsylvania she began reading Muslim websites and signed up at a Muslim dating site. She learned the basics of Islam from a mentor in Turkey and converted "via instant messenger". "I was finally where I belonged," she recalled. She took the Muslim name Fatima. Her Myspace profile featured messages such as "Palestine We Are With You" and "Sympathize With Gaza". In her profile, she said she is a recent convert to Islam. In Europe, she first met Muslims in person; they were extremists who were devout and committed to the cause. They taught her to pray, and she was fully accepted as a Muslim.

LaRose's indictment charged that along with five unindicted co-conspirators (in South Asia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and the U.S.), she used the Internet to communicate with potential jihadists outside the U.S., conspired to commit murder, and financed terrorism. eventually joined the Quilliam Foundation to fight radicalization. LaRose was charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, making false statements to the FBI, and attempted identity theft. She was confined to her cell often for 23 hours a day but managed to become engaged to a fellow prisoner who promised to convert to Islam upon release. They met through "talking on the bowls", prison slang for scooping out toilet cell bowl water, calling and listening through the plumbing pipes.

Arrests in Ireland The same day as the unsealing of LaRose's indictment, four men and three women in their 20s and 40s were arrested in Waterford and Cork, Ireland, in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate Vilks. Irish police said most of those arrested were foreign residents of the country.

They reportedly included three Algerians (two of them a married couple), a Croatian Muslim convert, a Palestinian, a Libyan, and a U.S. national—Jamie Paulin Ramirez.

LaRose spoke online about her plans with at least one of the suspects apprehended in Ireland, according to a U.S. official. Her main contact in Ireland was believed to be Damache, who lived in Waterford with Ramirez. Gardaí believe LaRose may have visited Ireland to contact the suspects in 2009.

LaRose was the only American woman in recent years to have been charged in the U.S. with similar terrorist violations. Some terrorism experts pointed to LaRose's apparent mental instability, arguing she was an anomaly and not representative of a trend towards women jihadists.