Three freed over cartoonist 'plot'
Three people have been released over an alleged plot to kill Swedish artist Lars Vilks
Friday March 12 2010
Three of seven Muslims detained in Ireland over a suspected plot to assassinate a Swedish cartoonist have been released from custody.
Gardai confirmed a man and two women were freed after three and a half days of questioning.
A file will be prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions, they said.
Three men and one woman remain in gardai custody in the south east of the country over an alleged international conspiracy to murder Lars Vilks, who controversially depicted the Prophet Mohammed with the body of a dog.
Anti-terrorist units carried out a series of raids on Tuesday morning over a plot allegedly masterminded by a self-styled "Jihad Jane".
Those arrested included a Libyan couple and a Palestinian woman - who were earlier freed - a second Libyan man, one Algerian man, a woman from the US and a Croatian man.
Mr Vilks, whose cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed with the body of a dog were printed in the Swedish Nerikes Allehanda newspaper in August 2007, has been under threat of death from Iraqi members of the Islamic terrorist group al Qaida. They put a 100,000 US dollar (74,000 euro) bounty on the cartoonist's head, forcing him into police protection in an isolated area of Sweden.
US caretaker Colleen LaRose, who styled herself Jihad Jane in a YouTube video, was charged with plotting his attempted murder. The suspect was accused in the US on Tuesday of conspiring with jihadist fighters and pledging to commit murder in the name of a Muslim holy war, or jihad.
According to the US Justice Department, the 46-year-old, who also goes by the name Fatima LaRose, plotted with five others in South Asia, Eastern and Western Europe and the US to recruit men on the internet to wage violent jihad in South Asia and Europe.
US prosecutors said she was ordered to kill Mr Vilks in a way which would frighten "the whole Kufar (non-believer) world". If convicted of the charges against her, LaRose faces a potential sentence of life in prison and a one million dollar fine.
