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PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania: A blond American, who dubbed herself "JihadJane" and allegedly tried to use her looks to avoid detection, pleaded not guilty on Thursday to recruiting Islamic militants in the latest home-grown terrorism case.
Pennsylvania resident Colleen LaRose, 46, smiled and appeared relaxed as she denied conspiracy to support terrorists, recruiting militants, and agreeing to murder a Swedish cartoonist who had offended some Muslims.
The federal court judge in Philadelphia ordered Rose, whose blonde hair was done up in dreadlocks and a pony tail, to be held without bail until her trial starts May 3.
If found guilty she faces up to life in prison.
The rash of cases of so-called home-grown terrorists is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States.
LaRose's case is seen as indicating an alarming new development in which militants are drawn not from Muslim immigrant communities but from Americans born and raised in the United States.
In Chicago, another US citizen, David Coleman Headley, was expected to plead guilty on Thursday to scoping out targets in India for the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks and plotting to attack a Danish newspaper.
Headley was born Daood Gilani to a Pakistani father and American mother, but later changed to his mother's maiden name and adopted a Western first name, allowing himself to blend in more easily.
LaRose allegedly boasted in Internet traffic, where she went by the monikers "Fatima LaRose" and "JihadJane," that her looks allowed her to go anywhere undetected.
Her alleged recruitment drive targeted women with the kind of mobility to escape initial suspicion. They were to possess "passports and the ability to travel to and around Europe in support of violent jihad," the indictment says.
She is accused of trying to transfer a stolen US passport "to facilitate an act of international terrorism."
Experts say the already complex battle between US security forces and a myriad of militant groups is becoming even more muddled.
LaRose's transformation into an alleged Islamist plotter is "one of our worst nightmares playing out," said Jerrold Post, author of "The Mind of the Terrorist" and director of the political psychology program at George Washington University.
"Individuals carrying American, British, French, any European passport who are indistinguishable from other citizens and who have been somehow radicalised... I have every reason to believe this will be increasing in frequency," Post told AFP.
US counter-terrorism agencies are "concerned" about the influence of inspirational figures who reach out online to radicalise new adherents, said National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair.
One such figure is Anwar al-Awlaqi, a radical imam who was born in New Mexico and is believed to be hiding in Yemen, Blair told a congressional hearing last month in his annual threat assessment last month.
Al-Awlaqi has been cited as an influence on three of the hijackers in the September 11, 2001 attacks and was in e-mail contact with Major Nadal Hassan, the US army psychiatrist accused of opening fire at the Fort Hood army base and killing 13 people in November.
The imam has also been linked to a Nigerian student accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound flight with explosives in his underwear on Christmas Eve and Sharif Mobley, a New Jersey-born man arrested in Yemen this month on terror charges.
"Thus far, radicalisation of groups and individuals in the United States has done more to spread jihadist ideology and generate support for violent causes overseas than it has produced terrorists targeting the homeland," Blair said.
Rising political tensions following the election of the nation's first black president combined with a lengthy and deep economic downturn has also led to the growth of other forms of domestic terrorism.
The number of extremist groups and armed militias which advocate radical anti-government doctrines and conspiracy theories nearly tripled last year to 512 from 149 in 2008, according a recent report by to the Southern Poverty Law Centre, which tracks the activities of hate groups. - AFP/de
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