WASHINGTON - A wanna-be "Jihad Jane" from suburban Philadelphia recruited killers online and volunteered to zap a Swedish cartoonist who insulted Islam, federal prosecutors charged Tuesday.
The target who Colleen LaRose, 46, a convert to Islam, intended to kill is unnamed in a federal indictment unsealed Tuesday, but a source confirmed it was cartoonist Lars Vilks.
Vilks drew ire among Muslims for drawing the head of the Prophet Muhammad on the body of a dog in 2007.
In Ireland, seven Muslims from Morocco and Yemen - including three women - were also busted yesterday for plotting Vilks' killing, which an official in Washington linked to the FBI's LaRose probe.
"She recruited them," the U.S. official said.
U.S. prosecutors do not allege that LaRose, from Pennsburg, Pa., targeted fellow Americans or ever forged real ties with any extremist group.
Most of her online pen pals from around the globe weren't terrorists, with the exception of one in South Asia, a source said.
"I'm not shaking with fear, exactly," Vilks told Swedish news agency TT, according to Agence-France Presse. "I have an axe here in case someone should manage to get in through the window."
LaRose, who also went by "Fatima LaRose" online, posted rambling notes on English-language jihadi Web sites, the SITE Intelligence Group reported yesterday. She symphathized with "the suffering Muslim people" and Islamic fighters.
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Just more evidence that some of the people who need to be watched may be our own neighbors.