US mother on run for 25 years admits bomb charges
A former revolutionary on the run in the US for 25 years has appeared in court.
Symbionese Liberation Army fugitive Sara Jane Olson has pleaded guilty to trying to blow up police cars outside a police station and restaurant in the 1970s.
The case dates back to the era of the SLA, the revolutionary group behind the 1974 kidnapping of 19-year-old media heiress Patty Hearst.
After she was photographed during an SLA bank robbery in San Francisco, Hearst was captured and imprisoned until President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence. She later wrote a book in which she implicated Olson in SLA crimes.
Olson was charged with targeting police officers in retaliation for the deaths of six SLA members who died in a shootout and fire in 1974. She vanished a short time after the attempted bombing.
Olson, 54, made no reference to the attacks during the hearing in which she admitted to possessing bombs and attempting to explode them in two incidents - one at the Hollenbeck Police Station in Los Angeles and another near a House of Pancakes restaurant in Hollywood on August 21, 1975.
Neither bomb went off but Olson pleaded guilty to a charge that specifically said she had the bombs with the intent to murder police officers.
Prosecutors dismissed three other charges but did not guarantee Olson a specific sentence. Her lawyers said they expected her to get about five years in prison, but she could be sentenced to life behind bars on December 7.
Olson was indicted in 1976 under her given name, Kathleen Soliah, but remained a fugitive until her June 1999 capture in St Paul, Minnesota, where she was living under the assumed name Olson.
She had married a doctor, had three children and was living the life of a volunteer and community activist in an upmarket St Paul neighbourhood.
