Police release three held over cartoonist 'death plot'

Three of seven Muslims detained over a suspected plot to assassinate a Swedish cartoonist have been released from custody.

Gardaí last night 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 garda 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 the alleged plot.

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.

Today an American woman, Christine Mott, identified her 31-year-old daughter Jamie Paulin-Ramirez as one of the suspects arrested in Ireland. Ms Mott had been told of the arrest by the FBI and other US federal law enforcement agencies.

It was not clear if Ms Paulin-Ramirez was one of the two women released last night.

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, was under threat of death from Iraqi members of the Islamic terrorist group al Qaida.

They put a $100,000 dollar (€74,000) 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 murder bid.

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.

They are also accused of recruiting women online to travel to and around Europe supporting violent jihad.

It is understood LaRose agreed to marry an online contact from South Asia so he could move to 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 $1m (€740,000) fine.