Colorado woman questioned in plot to kill cartoonist

Three others remained in custody and were being questioned.

The seven were arrested Tuesday in Ireland hours before US authorities unveiled a terror indictment against a 46-year-old Philadelphia woman, Colleen LaRose, in connection with the alleged murder plot.

Mott recalled yesterday that before her daughter disappeared last fall, she announced she had converted to Islam. Paulin-Ramirez also began talking about Jihad with her Muslim stepfather, George Mott, and spent most of her time online as she withdrew from her family, her mother said.

“We were enemies,’’ said Mott, 59. “We couldn’t even speak to each other.’’

Paulin-Ramirez left Leadville, an old mining town, on Sept. 11, and took her 6-year-old son with her, her mother said.

A US official, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity, said earlier yesterday that Paulin-Ramirez had been detained in Ireland in connection with the alleged plot to kill Vilks, whose 2007 sketch depicted the head of the prophet Mohammed on a dog’s body, offending many Muslims and provoking terror front Al Qaeda in Iraq to offer a $100,000 bounty for his slaying.

Christine Mott described her daughter as troubled single mother who had the “mentality of an abused woman’’ and who, in trying to escape her loneliness, may have spiraled into the depths of Islam extremism.

US authorities on Tuesday unsealed terror charges against LaRose, who allegedly went by the name “Jihad Jane’’ to recruit others online to kill the cartoonist.

Denver FBI officials said yesterday they couldn’t confirm that the FBI had contacted Christine Mott about the case.

Mott said that Paulin-Ramirez told her family after she left in September that she went to Ireland with her son and married an Algerian whom she met online. Before abruptly leaving Colorado, Paulin-Ramirez had been a straight-A nursing student and worked at a clinic, her mother said.

She moved to Leadville from Denver six years ago.