North Phila.'s 'Young Lioness' cited in ISIS report

She called herself "Young Lioness" and roared online for the Islamic State.

Federal prosecutors say Keonna Thomas, 30, of North Philadelphia, tweeted ISIS propaganda, raised funds for jihadists in Syria, booked a flight, mapped a route, and planned to go there for a suicide attack after a fighter she met online recruited her.

Arrested eight months ago, she is scheduled for trial in June.

She is among 71 people cited this week in "ISIS in America: From Retweets to Raqqa," a report by George Washington University's Program on Extremism. Raqqa, a city in Syria, is the capital of ISIS's presumptive caliphate.

The 50-page document draws on docketed cases of people charged in the United States with ISIS-related activities between March 2014 and November 2015.

Suggesting a sharp rise in such investigations, 56 of the 71 were arrested this year.

The release follows the recent terror attacks in Paris, a worldwide travel alert for U.S. citizens, and nonspecific warnings about possible attacks on American soil.

ISIS, also known as ISIL, "blends traditional media platforms . . . and social media campaigns that can go viral in a matter of seconds," FBI Director James Comey told a Senate panel in July. "No matter the format, the message of radicalization spreads faster than we imagined just a few years ago."

In addition to Thomas, an unnamed minor in Pennsylvania is cited in the report. Three cases, involving the brothers Nader and Alaa Saadeh and coconspirators, emanate from North Jersey.

"In a democracy like ours, the expression of radical ideas is protected by the Constitution," Jane Harman, president of the Woodrow Wilson Center, a congressionally chartered think tank, says in the report's foreword. "Violent action - inspired by those beliefs - is not."

In the case of Thomas, who is charged with attempting to aid a foreign terrorist organization, it appears the FBI's March 27 raid on her North 10th Street rowhouse prevented her from using the ticket she booked to Europe to begin her planned travel to Syria two days later.

In June, the FBI said about 200 Americans had traveled or attempted to travel to Syria to participate in the conflict.

Although the FBI has ISIS-related investigations in all 50 states, arrests have occurred in just 21.

The largest number - 13 - are from New York, followed by 11 from Minnesota.

Emphasizing that the defendants defy "cookie-cutter" profiling, the report says they are generally "seekers" - of revenge, status, identity, or thrills - and share some characteristics:

Eighty-six percent are male.

The average age, for men and women, is 26.

Forty percent are converts to Islam, which exceeds the estimated 23 percent of the American Muslim population who are converts.

The vast majority - 73 percent - plotted attacks outside the United States.

Sixty-four of the 71 people charged are U.S. citizens or legal residents. Researchers were unable to determine the status of the remaining seven.

The report also notes that "other forms of extremism constitute an equal, if not larger, threat to American domestic security," citing a New American Foundation study this year, which found that since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, almost twice as many Americans have been killed by white supremacists and other antigovernment domestic radicals as have been killed by Islamist extremists.

The report mentions Abu Khalid al Amriki, a U.S.-born jihadi who reportedly was killed in Syria in September. An avid user of five Twitter accounts, he appeared in an April ISIS-produced video wearing camouflage and holding an AK-47.

Citing court records, but without giving details, the report says Amriki "did at some point communicate with Keonna Thomas."

At Thomas' probable-cause hearing in April, the government said that in a message sent from her Internet address, the unemployed mother of two told a man who she believed was an ISIS fighter that she dreamed of taking part in a martyrdom operation. His reply: "I can make that wish come true."

The government also presented evidence that Thomas applied for her first passport, bought a ticket on an international flight, got a visa for Turkey (a common transit point to Syria), and researched bus routes across Europe to the Middle East.

The public defenders who represented Thomas argued that the evidence in the government's case is ambiguous.

Thomas was remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service pending trial.

Stemming the threat of ISIS recruitment involves the difficult task of distinguishing Internet chatter from imminent action, especially since some potential recruits never make the leap from talk to terrorism.

The problem "cannot be solved by arrests alone," concludes the report, which calls for "dynamic programs" of counter-messaging aimed at the audiences targeted by ISIS to prevent radicalization.

mmatza@phillynews.com

215-854-2541@MichaelMatza1