A second American Muslim woman has been arrested in Ireland on charges in a suspected international plot to kill a Swedish for mocking the Prophet Mohammad, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
The news of the second arrest came as three of the seven Muslims arrested in the alleged conspiracy were released without charge by Irish police.According to the Journal's online report, a 31-year-old mother from Colorado named Jamie Paulin-Ramirez was one of seven people detained in Ireland on Tuesday.
Irish police said they were arrested in connection with a plot to kill cartoonist Lars Vilk because of his drawing depicting the Prophet Mohammed.
Paulin-Ramirez announced nearly a year ago she had embraced Islam and last Sept. 11 left her home in a small Rocky Mountain town to marry a Muslim man in New York she had made contact with via an Internet website, the newspaper said.
The U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday it had charged a Pennsylvania woman, Colleen LaRose, who went by the pseudonyms "Fatima LaRose" and "JihadJane," with plotting to kill a Swedish man.
Officials at the Justice Department were not immediately available for comment on The Wall Street Journal report.
Three freed
The Journal said one of the people detained in Ireland was an Algerian man who was the main contact for LaRose. That man "has a relationship with Ms. Paulin-Ramirez according to a person close to the matter," the newspaper reported.
The arrests in Ireland included two more Algerians, a Croatian, a Palestinian and a Libyan, according to the story.
Three people, two women and one man, were freed after three-and-a-half days of questioning. Three men and one woman remain in custody.
Suspects can be held for up to a week after their arrest without charge. Police are preparing files on the three who were released for the country's director of public prosecutions, meaning they could still face charges.
The controversy started when Swedish regional daily Nerikes Allehanda published Vilks' satirical cartoon in 2007 to illustrate an editorial on the importance of freedom of expression.
The cartoon prompted protests by Muslims in the town of Oerebro, west of Stockholm, where the newspaper is based, while Egypt, Iran and Pakistan made formal complaints.
An al-Qaeda front organization then offered $100,000 to anyone who murdered Vilks -- with an extra $50,000 if his throat was slit -- and $50,000 for the death of Nerikes Allehanda editor-in-chief Ulf Johansson.
The protests in Sweden echoed the uproar caused in Denmark by the publication in September 2005 of 12 drawings focused on Islam, including several of the Prophet Mohammed.
On Wednesday, leading Swedish newspapers published Vilks' cartoon again in a demonstration of solidarity.
