Former SLA member Sara Jane Olson released from California prison

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LOS ANGELES " The former Symbionese Liberation Army fugitive who hid for years by posing as an ordinary housewife was released from prison Thursday after serving time for trying to bomb police cars in Los Angeles, corrections officials said.

Sara Jane Olson, formerly known as Kathleen Soliah, walked out of the Central Women's Facility in Chowchilla, said Bill Sessa, a state Department of Corrections spokesman.

In 2001, Olson pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 14 years in prison for attempting to bomb police cars in 1975 with the SLA, the group best known for kidnapping newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst. Olson vanished soon after she was charged for the attempted bombings and reinvented herself as a housewife.

"Like all inmates in her circumstance, she earned time for her good behavior in prison, she wasn't treated any differently than anybody else," Sessa said.

Olson was caught in 1999 when her minivan was pulled over by police near her home in St. Paul, Minn. She had changed her name and was living as a housewife with a husband and three school-age daughters.

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