US mom: Daughter held in Ireland 'lost her mind'

Before her daughter disappeared last fall, Christine Mott recalls that the 31-year-old who had been held in connection with an alleged assassination plot announced she had converted to Islam and told her family they'd go to hell if they didn't follow in her steps.

Jamie Paulin-Ramirez also began talking about Jihad with her Muslim stepfather and spent most of her time online as she withdrew from her family, Mott said.

"We were enemies," Christine Mott said. "We couldn't even speak to each other."

Last year, on Sept. 11, Paulin-Ramirez left Leadville, Colo., an old silver mining town west of Denver that was Colorado's second-largest city during its heyday. She took her 6-year-old son with her, her mother said.

A U.S. official, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Saturday that Paulin-Ramirez had been detained in Ireland in connection with an alleged plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist who had offended many Muslims.

Irish police said later Saturday that they had released without charge an American woman, who they didn't identify, and three others arrested in Ireland over an alleged plot to assassinate the cartoonist, Lars Vilks.

Paulin-Ramirez's arrest is one of four developments in the past week that have involved Americans in alleged terror plots abroad.

Al-Qaida spokesman Adam Gadahn appeared in a video, Sharif Mobley of New Jersey tried to escape his detainment in Yemen, and Colleen LaRose, who allegedly went by the name "Jihad Jane" to recruit others online to kill Vilks, was named in a federal terror indictment.

Smoking as she sat on her living room couch in Leadville, Christine Mott said she hadn't eaten in days. The 59-year-old described her daughter as a 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 Islamic extremism.

Mott told The Associated Press that she learned of her daughter's arrest in the case from the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies.

Denver FBI officials said Saturday they couldn't confirm that the FBI had contacted Mott about the case.

Paulin-Ramirez told her family after she left in September that she went to Ireland with her 6-year-old son and married an Algerian whom she met online, Mott said.

Before abruptly leaving Colorado, Paulin-Ramirez had been a straight-A nursing student and had worked at a clinic in Edwards, about 40 miles west of Leadville, her mother said. She moved to Leadville from Denver six years ago. Phone calls to the clinic in Edwards went unanswered Saturday.

Mott said her daughter told her family during Easter last year that she converted to Islam, and renamed her son. Mott said her daughter was teaching him to hate Christians as she grew more distant from her family.

When she discussed jihad with her stepfather, George Mott, who has been a Muslim for more than 40 years, she told him "she'd strap a bomb for the cause," Christine Mott said.

She said she believes her daughter was lonely and "got sucked in" and brainwashed by other people.

"To go blow somebody up?" said Paulin-Ramirez's mother, who is not Muslim. "That's never been Islam."

Growing up, Paulin-Ramirez was "the kid in the class everyone picked on and made fun of," Mott said. She was married three times before she left for Ireland, and her first husband used to beat her, she said.

Her second husband, the 6-year-old's father, was an illegal immigrant from Mexico and was deported years ago, Mott said.

Paulin-Ramirez liked going on fishing and camping trips but grew distant before her departure, Mott said. She spent much of her time on the computer, she said.