JihadJane

Pennsburg (Pennsylvania), March 11: Colleen R. LaRose, the strawberry-haired suburban woman who is accused of volunteering for a terrorist plot in Europe, appeared to live a double life.

Her MySpace page is registered under “JihadJane”. In the profile photo, only her mascara-caked eyes and thin arching eyebrows are visible behind a jet-black burqa that covers her face and head.

She listed Islam as her religion, and “Palestine, Iraq, Chechna, Afghanistan”, all sites of armed Islamic resistance, as her occupation. For a hometown, she wrote “Jannah”, the Muslim analogue to heaven or paradise.

Yet a former boyfriend, who shared an apartment with LaRose for nearly five years, said that she never talked about international events, and that he was unaware of her Islamic faith or her alleged involvement in an extremist plot.

“I can’t understand it. I can’t believe it,” Kurt Gorman told reporters outside his office in Richland Township, Pennsylvania. He called the case “crazy”.

LaRose, 46, will be arraigned in federal court in Philadelphia on March 18 on charges of providing material support for terrorists and for plotting with others to kill a Swedish cartoonist whose depiction of the Prophet Muhammad had ignited a controversy.

LaRose, who also used the name “Fatima LaRose”, was arrested by the FBI on October 15 and has been in custody since then. The unusual case became public on Tuesday when a federal grand jury indictment was unsealed.

LaRose was born in Michigan but was raised and married twice in Texas, where her mother and sister lived. Her former husbands and family members could not be reached.

Texas public records show LaRose was convicted of criminal trespass in Runnels County in 1985, and fined $338. She was jailed for four days in Tom Green County in 1997 for driving while intoxicated. She also was charged with passing a bad check, but the warrant was not served.

Gorman said they met in 2004 while he was on a business trip to Ennis, Texas. LaRose soon moved in with Gorman and his father in a four-bedroom apartment. “She just seemed like a completely normal person,” he said.

Gorman, 47, owns a company that builds radio broadcast equipment. He described LaRose as “no rocket scientist” but said she was good-hearted.