The woman authorities say a terrorism suspect killed in Boston had hoped to behead has a long history of targeting Muslims with controversial ads, a campaign against a New York City mosque and, most recently, a provocative contest for cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad attacked by two gunmen.
Pamela Geller is the founder of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, listed as an anti-Muslim hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Authorities say a terror suspect named Usaamah Abdullah Rahim whom police shot and killed this week had either fantasized about or plotted to kill her.
Rahim was killed by police Tuesday after he was stopped for questioning, police said. He had been under surveillance with a second man, David Wright, over an alleged plot to kill law enforcement officers, but earlier had talked of traveling to New York to behead Geller, according to the FBI.
Before details emerged on the alleged plot, Geller had most recently made headlines when the "Draw Muhammad" cartoon contest her group hosted near Dallas last month was attacked by two gunmen with who were shot dead by security after opening fire with assault rifles outside.
"We absolutely must have other events like this to stand up for free speech," Geller told NBC News at the time. "I will not abridge my freedoms so as not to offend savages."
The contest in Garland, Texas, had promised a $10,000 prize for the best depiction of Muhammad. Mainstream Islamic tradition considers any physical depiction of the prophet, even a respectful one, blasphemous.
Geller called the drawings of the Muslim prophet "political critique."
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"I do believe western civilization is superior," she told NBC News.
Geller and her group had drawn headlines in the past for campaigning against the building of an Islamic center blocks from the World Trade Center site and for buying advertising space in cities across the United States to criticize Islam.
The group also spearheaded protests in Garland in January, when a Chicago-based nonprofit held a fundraiser designed to help Muslims combat negative depictions of their faith. About 1,000 people picketed the event, some with signs with messages such as, "Insult those who behead others," an apparent reference to recent beheadings by the militant group Islamic State.
The American Freedom Defense Initiative and Geller were in the news for a second time last month over a dispute with the New York City mass transit system. Following the group's legal battle to display "Hamas Killing Jews" ads on buses, the Metropolitan Transit Authority voted to ban all political ads on New York City subways and buses.
The policy change capped a legal battle that had ended when a judge ruled that Geller's group could show the ads, in a ruling Geller called a "victory for freedom and individual rights." The MTA had earlier refused to display one with the quote "Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah" because it could incite violence.
The American Freedom Defense Initiative has run controversial ads on subways and buses in other cities across the country as well — among them Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
The group pulled an ad from the New York City transit system last fall that had shown the American journalist James Foley kneeling just before he was beheaded by an Islamic State executioner. His family had objected to the ad.
Khalid Y. Hamideh, an attorney who represents Muslim organizations in Texas, told NBC News last month that the community in northern Texas decided not to protest the "Draw Muhammad" event because they didn't want Geller "to get more publicity than really what she deserved."
