Here’s the latest in the Jihad Jane/Jihad Jamie case. “In Ireland, a Hearing on a Plot to Kill a Swedish Cartoonist,” by Eamon Quinn and John F. Burns for the New York Times, March 15 (thanks to Bill):
WATERFORD, Ireland — A late-night court hearing Monday in this quiet Irish town gave new glimpses into the case that American and Irish prosecutors are pursuing against a group of Muslims on both sides of the Atlantic suspected of plotting to kill a Swedish cartoonist who depicted the Prophet Muhammad atop the body of a dog.
Five of the seven people arrested in Ireland a week ago have been released, the last of them shortly before Monday’s hearing. But two others, an Algerian man and a Libyan man, were formally charged with relatively minor offenses that lawyers involved in the case said could keep them in custody while more serious charges, including conspiracy to murder, are weighed by Irish prosecutors. The lawyers said charges against the five others were also possible.
The Algerian who appeared in the Waterford court, named as Ali Charaf Damache, 45, was said by police officials to be suspected of being the group’s leader. Mr. Damache, a 10-year resident of Ireland, was charged with sending a threatening computer message to another Muslim in Waterford. The Libyan, named as Abdul Salam al Jahani, 32, was charged with using a false name to obtain asylum status in Ireland in 2001. Both were ordered held without bail while an investigation continued.
No reference was made in the 15-minute hearing to the wider circumstances of the case, which has centered in the United States on a 46-year-old Pennsylvania woman, Colleen R. LaRose, a Muslim convert who adopted the pseudonym of JihadJane on the Internet, and has been in custody in Philadelphia since the fall on charges of linking up with militants overseas in a plot to carry out a murder, apparently that of the Swedish cartoonist, Lars Vilks.
The arrests in Ireland drew a second American woman into the case: Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, 31, from Leadville, Colo.. A Muslim convert like Ms. LaRose, Ms. Paulin-Ramirez is the wife of Mr. Damache, the Algerian charged in the Monday’s hearing, according to a Waterford lawyer involved in the case, and is several months pregnant. She was one of the seven arrested last Tuesday, but was released on the weekend. […]
Ms. Paulin-Ramirez’s mother, Christine Mott, 59, said in an interview last week in Colorado that her daughter announced her conversion to Islam last Easter and became increasingly estranged from her family….
Hmmm. Now, why is that?