Jihad Jane: A Special Trip To Visit an Islamic Woman in Prison who Threatened Cartoonists of Prophet Muhammad, Pbuh.
On Saturday, May 7, 2016 I traveled to Tallahassee, Florida's Federal Correctional Institution to visit Colleen "Fatima" LaRose, also known as "Jihad Jane." She was sentenced to ten years for conspiracy to commit murder overseas, for her role in a 2009 failed plot to kill Lars Vilks, the Swedish cartoonist who mocked the Prophet Mohammad (pbuh). She spent four years in solitary confinement but now resides in general population in a unit containing 60 women.
Fatima was very surprised to see me, as she has not been receiving any mail for two months, ever since I sent her the article I wrote about her for New Trend. Oddly enough, the prison counselor never received my visitor request form in the mail either. Thankfully, he was very kind and expedited the approval process after I overnighted him a second form. Fatima has not received a visitor in years. She greeted me warmly with a long, tight embrace. The 52 year old convert to Islam wore a khaki prison suit with a white hijab. She was in good spirits and seems to be well-liked by the guards and the co-prisoners. The guard had joked to her laughingly, "Are you gonna behead me?" She calls the other women, most of whom are much younger than herself, "my babies." "I never had children before I came to prison," she laughs.
We shared a delightful 1 ½ hour visit eating cookies and drinking soda from the vending machine in a visiting room full of families sitting at round tables. There were also tables outside in the courtyard, but Fatima preferred to stay in the air conditioning. She had me cracking up, telling me a lot of funny stories about life in prison. For example, she likes to sneak food from the kitchen. One time she had a bra full of eggs and another inmate came up to her and gave her a big hug! She was later caught bringing a tomato to a cellmate, and lost her kitchen job. She is now relegated to the dishroom but occasionally sneaks into the kitchen to help her friends cook.
She spoke of her admiration for Br. Osama bin Laden. "You can see from his face that there is a light about him." She does not believe the news about Osama being killed by US forces and dumped into the sea. She hopes that he is still alive somewhere. I mentioned to her that he is likely to have died from kidney failure. Regarding 9/11, she said, "Osama explained to the Jews and them that the Muslims don't want your western ways and you need to get your troops out of our lands. He told them again and again. They were forewarned." She listens to the news and continues to be very interested in ongoing developments such as ISIS.
"I want to support them," she said, "But I think they've gone too far, burning that guy alive." I explained to her what I had learned from New Trend, that the man was a fighter pilot whose plane had gone down after he had firebombed people. "Oh, I never knew that!" she exclaimed. "In that case, he deserved it."
She said there are about 15 Muslim sisters in her prison, who attend jummah prayers. She is the only one keeping hijab. "They all call it 'high-jab!'" she laughs in her charming southern accent. She wears a black hijab to work and the white one other times.
Fatima has a very sunny disposition, she is energetic and friendly to everyone and seems to be respected and loved by the women in her unit. She has found a way to bridge the gap between Muslims and non-Muslims by staunchly refusing to back down from her own beliefs and values at the same time as graciously and lovingly accepting other people for who they choose to be - one of her favorite people to socialize with is a Spanish-speaking religious Jew who is also transgender. She introduced me to a pretty young black woman passing by. "Her husband is my baby." The "husband," Fatima's cellmate, is injecting male hormones and growing a beard.
"There's a lot of that going on in here!" she whispers, laughing cheerfully at the juicy gossip.
Fatima, who is expected to be released in Pennsylvania in 2018, is looking forward to becoming a part of a real Muslim community. Her interaction with the Ummah was almost entirely online. Fatima had become obsessed with jihad after learning about the situation in Palestine.
Fatima said people often asked her if she will do anything jihad-related again, once she is released but she says no. "They are not going to ask me to do anything else. I have already proved myself," she said of her mentors, whom she believes to be with al Qaeda. "I was very honored as a woman to be chosen for a mission. Usually they give those kinds of jobs to the brothers. I don't like that I'm in prison, but it's not that bad." She has always been very patient with the decision of Allah, even when she was in the Special Housing Unit (SHU) in solitary.
Regardless of what one believes about her choice of action, it says a lot about her character that she was willing to sacrifice herself in order to stand up for her brothers and sisters around the world, that she had never met, who had done nothing for her. Fatima's future plan upon release is to grow flowers and vegetables. For now, she is looking forward to fasting for Ramadan.
[New Trend urges readers to write to the sister.]
COLLEEN LAROSE
Register Number: 61657-066
FCI TALLAHASSEE
FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION
501 CAPITAL CIRCLE, NE
TALLAHASSEE, FL 32301
Showing posts with label cartoonist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cartoonist. Show all posts
Sunday, September 4, 2016
Sunday, March 13, 2016
She Wanted to Avenge the Honor of the Prophet
Interview with Fatima LaRose [Jihad Jane]
2015-12-13
http://newtrendmag.org/ntma1632.htm
Fatima LaRose, the woman who was arrested for conspiring to kill the Swedish cartoonist who drew a picture of Mohammed with a dog's body, has allowed New Trend to interview her. She pled guilty in 2010 to "Conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, false statement to a government official, and attempted identity theft."
She had posted online as Jihad Jane: "When our brothers defend our faith their homes, they are terrorist. Fine, then I am a terrorist and proud to be this."
The plot began in January 2009, when someone online called Eagle Eye claiming to be a Pakistani from al Qaida asked the recent White American Muslim convert to become a martyr. He claimed to have participated in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, according to NBC News. She pledged to use her blonde hair, green eyes and white skin to "to achieve what is in my heart." After she agreed to meet him in Amsterdam for marriage, the online man then instructed her to go to Sweden and shoot the cartoonist six times in the chest. She vowed to do it or die trying. U.S. authorities won't admit the whereabouts of Eagle Eye, or Abdullah, another man who had promised to train her in the use of firearms in Amsterdam. I am suspicious because I never heard of any Pakistanis calling themselves "al Qaeda." Al-Qaeda are Arabs. She had no idea.
On December 4, 2015, Fatima wrote: "When my Brother (in Islam) told me to get out of America, my boyfriend had no idea all that or really any of what I was involved in. It was like I was living a double life. In my home I was one person but online I was someone else. I finally gave into my online life and went for broke. No one in my life knew what I was into. I just always was online talking to my Ummah and all I thought about was jihad. If you wonder if I regret my actions - I only regret hurting my loved ones but I don't regret agreeing to do what ultimately got me put in prison.
"I feel the Brother that gave me the assignment gave me an honour because Sisters never get assignments like that. I tell you my dear Sister I Love my Brother and I will always love him. People tell me he used me to do what he wanted done and people blame him for my predicament. But I say NO he did not use me and he is not to blame for me being in prison. I am responsible for my actions and I knew what I was doing when I agreed to do what he asked me to do. My Brother never wanted me to come to any harm. I don't know if he is even still alive. My lawyer thinks he is either dead or he was an agent for the FBI. I know for certain my brother was not any kind of agent for the FBI or any other American agency. I will always love my Brother no matter what anyone says about him." All we know is that he was never arrested, despite being the "mastermind" behind the conspiracy to assassinate the vile cartoonist.
LaRose never made it to Amsterdam, though she did spend some time in Ireland staying with Ali Damache, an Algerian calling himself Black Flag, who also lured another white American woman Jamie Ramirez and her son to come live with him. Both women thought they were going there to be trained for jihad, but once they got there, they realized the Muslim man had just been boasting. He used Ramirez, whom he married the day she arrived, to cook and clean and would not even give her a key to the house, although LaRose was allowed to go in and out as she pleased. It was weird, but not terrorism. Damache successfully contested the illegal police search of his Waterford apartment. Irish authorities have refused to extradite him to the U.S.
"Jihad Jane is a perfect figure in some ways because it's like a soap opera," says her intended victim, cartoonist Vilks. "This is today's most interesting part of terrorism -- the amateurs."
Vilks says he believes LaRose has served enough time already. "They should let her go."
The cartoonist's calm attitude towards a woman that intended to kill him creates an awareness of the moral complexities of any given situation. He considers her as a victim of her past.
"I survived a lot of things that should have rightfully killed me," LaRose said of the terrible things she lived through, including being repeatedly raped by her father, running away and becoming a teenage prostitute, growing up White in Detroit.
"I also thought there was a purpose for me to be alive and then when I found Islam, I thought... 'This is why I have lived so long.'"
LaRose always has a patient attitude in all of her letters. In June, 2010, she wrote to me from the SHU in Philadelphia as she awaited sentencing.
"Mashallah ukhti (my co-defendent) is in G.P. (General Population) so we have a separation and I rather be the one to be in the SHU." She signed her letter "Fatima LaRose AKA Jihad Jane."
By July 2015 she had become more introspective, talking about her new life in General Population, after she got moved out of SHU, where she spent four years in solitary.
"I guess my kindness is my weakness. I am always trying to be a people pleaser. I just like to see people happy so when people ask me for something I usually try to get them what they ask for. But when I want something I am ignored. Also I am quiet and I observe people and I see so much that I can't believe others don't see what I do."
She turned 52 this year. No longer living in isolation she shares a cell with a "goth girl" who she describes as a fantastic artist. "My friends give me a birthday party. That's the first birthday party I've had since I was a child. I was happy and felt like I am loved. The girls decorated my bed in flowers and butterflies they made."
Working on her GED, she struggles with math. "I was taken out of school when I was a kid by the 7th grade. But I had quit going to school by grade 5. I believe that's the last grade I completed. I sure never did any geometry or algebra so the math is all new to me. I did a lot of drugs while I was growing up and I believe that all those drugs did a lot to mess up my mind. My memory is shot. I get confused real easily when I'm trying to concentrate on math. Anyways by the time I get out of prison I will be 55 years old and I intend to be a housewife. I'm not going to get a job. Who would want to hire a 55-year-old ex-con over a younger kid with no record."
2015-12-13
http://newtrendmag.org/ntma1632.htm
Fatima LaRose, the woman who was arrested for conspiring to kill the Swedish cartoonist who drew a picture of Mohammed with a dog's body, has allowed New Trend to interview her. She pled guilty in 2010 to "Conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, false statement to a government official, and attempted identity theft."
She had posted online as Jihad Jane: "When our brothers defend our faith their homes, they are terrorist. Fine, then I am a terrorist and proud to be this."
The plot began in January 2009, when someone online called Eagle Eye claiming to be a Pakistani from al Qaida asked the recent White American Muslim convert to become a martyr. He claimed to have participated in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, according to NBC News. She pledged to use her blonde hair, green eyes and white skin to "to achieve what is in my heart." After she agreed to meet him in Amsterdam for marriage, the online man then instructed her to go to Sweden and shoot the cartoonist six times in the chest. She vowed to do it or die trying. U.S. authorities won't admit the whereabouts of Eagle Eye, or Abdullah, another man who had promised to train her in the use of firearms in Amsterdam. I am suspicious because I never heard of any Pakistanis calling themselves "al Qaeda." Al-Qaeda are Arabs. She had no idea.
On December 4, 2015, Fatima wrote: "When my Brother (in Islam) told me to get out of America, my boyfriend had no idea all that or really any of what I was involved in. It was like I was living a double life. In my home I was one person but online I was someone else. I finally gave into my online life and went for broke. No one in my life knew what I was into. I just always was online talking to my Ummah and all I thought about was jihad. If you wonder if I regret my actions - I only regret hurting my loved ones but I don't regret agreeing to do what ultimately got me put in prison.
"I feel the Brother that gave me the assignment gave me an honour because Sisters never get assignments like that. I tell you my dear Sister I Love my Brother and I will always love him. People tell me he used me to do what he wanted done and people blame him for my predicament. But I say NO he did not use me and he is not to blame for me being in prison. I am responsible for my actions and I knew what I was doing when I agreed to do what he asked me to do. My Brother never wanted me to come to any harm. I don't know if he is even still alive. My lawyer thinks he is either dead or he was an agent for the FBI. I know for certain my brother was not any kind of agent for the FBI or any other American agency. I will always love my Brother no matter what anyone says about him." All we know is that he was never arrested, despite being the "mastermind" behind the conspiracy to assassinate the vile cartoonist.
LaRose never made it to Amsterdam, though she did spend some time in Ireland staying with Ali Damache, an Algerian calling himself Black Flag, who also lured another white American woman Jamie Ramirez and her son to come live with him. Both women thought they were going there to be trained for jihad, but once they got there, they realized the Muslim man had just been boasting. He used Ramirez, whom he married the day she arrived, to cook and clean and would not even give her a key to the house, although LaRose was allowed to go in and out as she pleased. It was weird, but not terrorism. Damache successfully contested the illegal police search of his Waterford apartment. Irish authorities have refused to extradite him to the U.S.
"Jihad Jane is a perfect figure in some ways because it's like a soap opera," says her intended victim, cartoonist Vilks. "This is today's most interesting part of terrorism -- the amateurs."
Vilks says he believes LaRose has served enough time already. "They should let her go."
The cartoonist's calm attitude towards a woman that intended to kill him creates an awareness of the moral complexities of any given situation. He considers her as a victim of her past.
"I survived a lot of things that should have rightfully killed me," LaRose said of the terrible things she lived through, including being repeatedly raped by her father, running away and becoming a teenage prostitute, growing up White in Detroit.
"I also thought there was a purpose for me to be alive and then when I found Islam, I thought... 'This is why I have lived so long.'"
LaRose always has a patient attitude in all of her letters. In June, 2010, she wrote to me from the SHU in Philadelphia as she awaited sentencing.
"Mashallah ukhti (my co-defendent) is in G.P. (General Population) so we have a separation and I rather be the one to be in the SHU." She signed her letter "Fatima LaRose AKA Jihad Jane."
By July 2015 she had become more introspective, talking about her new life in General Population, after she got moved out of SHU, where she spent four years in solitary.
"I guess my kindness is my weakness. I am always trying to be a people pleaser. I just like to see people happy so when people ask me for something I usually try to get them what they ask for. But when I want something I am ignored. Also I am quiet and I observe people and I see so much that I can't believe others don't see what I do."
She turned 52 this year. No longer living in isolation she shares a cell with a "goth girl" who she describes as a fantastic artist. "My friends give me a birthday party. That's the first birthday party I've had since I was a child. I was happy and felt like I am loved. The girls decorated my bed in flowers and butterflies they made."
Working on her GED, she struggles with math. "I was taken out of school when I was a kid by the 7th grade. But I had quit going to school by grade 5. I believe that's the last grade I completed. I sure never did any geometry or algebra so the math is all new to me. I did a lot of drugs while I was growing up and I believe that all those drugs did a lot to mess up my mind. My memory is shot. I get confused real easily when I'm trying to concentrate on math. Anyways by the time I get out of prison I will be 55 years old and I intend to be a housewife. I'm not going to get a job. Who would want to hire a 55-year-old ex-con over a younger kid with no record."
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
How Djamel Beghal was used : Kouachi brothers' Mentor?
How torture is used to make "terror" connections.
http://newtrendmag.org/ntma1584.htm
[Editor's note: Imam Abu Qatada was cleared of all charges when Britain deported him to Jordan. The Jordanian court found no evidence to convict him. ]
Djamel Beghal is described by media as a "terrorist connected to the notorious Finsbury Park mosque" who regularly attended "hate preacher" Imam Abu Qatada's sermons in the late 1990s, when the mosque "was Abu Hamza's base." Once "Osama bin Laden's main European recruiter," Beghal is now being said to be the Kouachi brothers' "mentor." He is even accused by media of having recruited "shoe bomber" Richard Reid and the "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui. Beghal "is also said to have met one of Osama bin Laden's key deputies at the former Al Qaeda leader's base in Afghanistan," reports the UK Daily Mail. "The terror leader spent ten years in prison in France for planning attacks. He was only released in 2010."
Except that the truth is that he seems to actually be just a random guy that got kidnapped at the airport in Abu Dhabi in July of 2001. The Algerian immigrant to France, married to a Frenchwoman and father of four had made the decision in November of 2000 to move his family to Jalalabad, Afghanistan because they wanted to live in a Muslim country. In July 2001, Beghal was accompanying an ailing friend's family from Pakistan to Morocco, when he was inexplicably taken into custody and held for four years in pre-trial detention, during which time he was brutally tortured into falsely confessing to attacking the US Embassy in Paris. A team of doctors kept an eye on his vital signs to advise the torturers how much pain he could tolerate. They told him crazy stories over and over again.
"They wanted me to accuse Abu Qatada at any cost. They wanted me to accuse him of a military plot (bombing plan) or at least to make him responsible for the ideological and financial management of terrorist networks linking London to Kabul but also many other capitals in Europe, Africa and Asia," Beghal told Arnaud Mafille in a 2011 report by CagePrisoners entitled, "Djamel Beghal: British and French complicity in torture."
"He would insist with brutality to reveal the link between Abu Qatada and Osama bin Laden, whom they all called Abu Abdallah. He would also question me about Abu Hamza, the Egyptian Imam of Finsbury Park mosque in London... He was also interested in Sheikh Abdul Wahid. He presented him as the spiritual trainer for suicide bombers and the indoctrinator under the commandment of Osama bin Laden...
"Geographically, he interrogated me on what I knew about the projects of Muslims living mainly in London, Luton, Manchester and Leicester."
French intelligence officials had been tracking Beghal for almost a decade. He was a known activist with Takfir wal Hijra, which they defined as a splinter group from the Muslim Brotherhood.
Beghal continues, "I was offered a scenario of an attack in France without specifying the place but by citing the names of friends living in France I had never mentioned to them before... It was disturbing to hear those names from the mouth of Emirati and CIA agents. France was behind the scenes."
French Judge Brugui�re then offered a bargain to Beghal.
"He grabbed some documents, showing them to me from far, then, full of confidence, he proposed to recognize their contents, to sign them and hence to be saved immediately, as well as my wife and three children. He assured me that instead of being sentenced from 10 to 20 years, I would be sentenced to 5 years at most, and that later I would be released after two and a half years of detention.
"I asked him the content of those documents. I was shocked when he said that it acknowledged the preparation of an attack against the United States Embassy in Paris, adding that Osama bin Laden was the sponsor. It was also proclaiming my repentance and my acknowledgement that I had been misled by Al Qaeda, which would have, by the way, "sold" me to foreign secret services!"
Sylvie Beghal, wife of Djamel Beghal, insisting on his innocence, told UK human rights organization, CAGE that her husband "is being punished for something he didn't do."
"This isn't the first time Mr Beghal has been wrongfully accused. In 2005 an appeal court threw out an earlier conviction for his alleged involvement in a plot to bomb the US embassy in Paris as it had been reliant on a confession extracted under torture," reported CAGE.
"He has been placed in solitary confinement after all the false media coverage. He has nothing to do with the attack against Charlie Hebdo," said Mrs. Beghal. "The media is repeating false allegations which have been made against him for 14 years now."
Amandla Thomas-Johnson of CAGE, stated: "Djamel Beghal has never encouraged or carried out any act of violence and there is absolutely nothing that can link him to the attack. The narrative that Djamel Beghal is a 'radicalizer' is an old rumor without basis, its endless repetition causing endless problems to him and his family."
http://newtrendmag.org/ntma1584.htm
[Editor's note: Imam Abu Qatada was cleared of all charges when Britain deported him to Jordan. The Jordanian court found no evidence to convict him. ]
Djamel Beghal is described by media as a "terrorist connected to the notorious Finsbury Park mosque" who regularly attended "hate preacher" Imam Abu Qatada's sermons in the late 1990s, when the mosque "was Abu Hamza's base." Once "Osama bin Laden's main European recruiter," Beghal is now being said to be the Kouachi brothers' "mentor." He is even accused by media of having recruited "shoe bomber" Richard Reid and the "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui. Beghal "is also said to have met one of Osama bin Laden's key deputies at the former Al Qaeda leader's base in Afghanistan," reports the UK Daily Mail. "The terror leader spent ten years in prison in France for planning attacks. He was only released in 2010."
Except that the truth is that he seems to actually be just a random guy that got kidnapped at the airport in Abu Dhabi in July of 2001. The Algerian immigrant to France, married to a Frenchwoman and father of four had made the decision in November of 2000 to move his family to Jalalabad, Afghanistan because they wanted to live in a Muslim country. In July 2001, Beghal was accompanying an ailing friend's family from Pakistan to Morocco, when he was inexplicably taken into custody and held for four years in pre-trial detention, during which time he was brutally tortured into falsely confessing to attacking the US Embassy in Paris. A team of doctors kept an eye on his vital signs to advise the torturers how much pain he could tolerate. They told him crazy stories over and over again.
"They wanted me to accuse Abu Qatada at any cost. They wanted me to accuse him of a military plot (bombing plan) or at least to make him responsible for the ideological and financial management of terrorist networks linking London to Kabul but also many other capitals in Europe, Africa and Asia," Beghal told Arnaud Mafille in a 2011 report by CagePrisoners entitled, "Djamel Beghal: British and French complicity in torture."
"He would insist with brutality to reveal the link between Abu Qatada and Osama bin Laden, whom they all called Abu Abdallah. He would also question me about Abu Hamza, the Egyptian Imam of Finsbury Park mosque in London... He was also interested in Sheikh Abdul Wahid. He presented him as the spiritual trainer for suicide bombers and the indoctrinator under the commandment of Osama bin Laden...
"Geographically, he interrogated me on what I knew about the projects of Muslims living mainly in London, Luton, Manchester and Leicester."
French intelligence officials had been tracking Beghal for almost a decade. He was a known activist with Takfir wal Hijra, which they defined as a splinter group from the Muslim Brotherhood.
Beghal continues, "I was offered a scenario of an attack in France without specifying the place but by citing the names of friends living in France I had never mentioned to them before... It was disturbing to hear those names from the mouth of Emirati and CIA agents. France was behind the scenes."
French Judge Brugui�re then offered a bargain to Beghal.
"He grabbed some documents, showing them to me from far, then, full of confidence, he proposed to recognize their contents, to sign them and hence to be saved immediately, as well as my wife and three children. He assured me that instead of being sentenced from 10 to 20 years, I would be sentenced to 5 years at most, and that later I would be released after two and a half years of detention.
"I asked him the content of those documents. I was shocked when he said that it acknowledged the preparation of an attack against the United States Embassy in Paris, adding that Osama bin Laden was the sponsor. It was also proclaiming my repentance and my acknowledgement that I had been misled by Al Qaeda, which would have, by the way, "sold" me to foreign secret services!"
Sylvie Beghal, wife of Djamel Beghal, insisting on his innocence, told UK human rights organization, CAGE that her husband "is being punished for something he didn't do."
"This isn't the first time Mr Beghal has been wrongfully accused. In 2005 an appeal court threw out an earlier conviction for his alleged involvement in a plot to bomb the US embassy in Paris as it had been reliant on a confession extracted under torture," reported CAGE.
"He has been placed in solitary confinement after all the false media coverage. He has nothing to do with the attack against Charlie Hebdo," said Mrs. Beghal. "The media is repeating false allegations which have been made against him for 14 years now."
Amandla Thomas-Johnson of CAGE, stated: "Djamel Beghal has never encouraged or carried out any act of violence and there is absolutely nothing that can link him to the attack. The narrative that Djamel Beghal is a 'radicalizer' is an old rumor without basis, its endless repetition causing endless problems to him and his family."
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