'Jihad Jane' and 7 others held in plot to kill Swedish cartoonist

The paper said LaRose had used YouTube and other sites to communicate with alleged militants abroad. The Times also linked to a MySpace account it believed to be that of LaRose (the page has since been taken down).

Michael L. Levy, the United States attorney for Eastern Pennsylvania, said in a statement the case illustrated how terrorists were looking for American recruits who could blend in. “It shatters any lingering thought that we can spot a terrorist based on appearance,” he said.

Ms. LaRose is white, with blond hair and green eyes, according to the law enforcement official, who was not authorized to share details of the case and spoke only on the condition of anonymity. The official said Ms. LaRose was born in Michigan and later lived in Texas and Montgomery County, Pa.

Potentially fanning the flames, three Swedish newspapers – the Dagens Nyheter, Expressen, and Sydsvenska Dagbladet – on Wednesday ran the original cartoon that stirred up the trouble, the Associated Press reported.

Sydsvenska Dagbladet says it printed the controversial drawing as part of its news coverage of the alleged plot to kill its creator, Lars Vilks. Expressen says it printed it for its news value and to take a stance for the freedom of speech.

The furor over Vilks's cartoon followed earlier riots and violence following the separate publication of cartoons satirizing the prophet Mohammad in September 2005 in a Danish newspaper. (See a timeline of offensive cartoons from BBC.)

But Americans have not seen the cartoons reprinted in their own newspapers.

In a 2006 Nieman Reports essay adapted from a Salon article, editorial cartoonist Doug Marlette slammed the US media for declining to republish those cartoons out of what he called misguided sensitivity, cowardice, and appeasement.

But once these images became a major news story (and given that they easily satisfied Western standards of legitimate commentary and in fact only became internationally controversial after being misrepresented to the larger Muslim world), I can see little reason – other than bodily fear, bottom-line self-preservation, and just poor judgment – that the US media and the public officials entrusted with defending our freedoms wimped out so thoroughly.

IN PICTURES: American Jihadis

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