U.S. Court Sentences Colorado Teen to 4 Years in Jail for Trying to Join ISIS

Jan 24, 2015 05:00 AM EST

(Photo : Reuters) Masked Spanish police officers lead a detained woman in Melilla, December 16, 2014. Spanish and Moroccan police have arrested seven people in an ongoing joint swoop on suspected efforts to recruit women to go to Syria and Iraq to support Islamic State insurgents.

Federal Judge Raymond Moore gave on Friday a four-year sentence to 19-year-old Shannon Maureen Conley for conspiracy to support the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Conley had admitted to the court that she wants to marry a jihadist and take part in the extremist Islamic group's battles to create a caliphate in the Middle East. Moore initially favored having Conley undergo psychiatric treatment, but he eventually agreed with the prosecutors to send the young woman to prison to deter other young Americans from making similar moves.

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In a span of few months, Conley agreed to marry three people from the ISIS just to become a part of the terror group. She also prefers to be called Amatullah, which means female servant of Allah, although when she converted to Islam, she initially used the name Halima, according to KMBC.

Before she was sentenced, Conley cried and read a statement that recounts her experience with ISIS. She acknowledged that her arrest allowed her to know the truth about the ISIS because while in jail, she had time to read the whole Quran, the holy book of Muslims.

The teen blames the Islam scholars she had been following online for giving her a distorted idea of the faith and says her commitment to the idea of a jihad was borne out of a desire to defend Muslims, not to hurt other people.

Conley asked the court for a chance to prove she is not a threat to society, but the court rejected her plea.

Not surprisingly, her parents are angry at the court's decision as her mother said, quoted by CNN, that if the American legal system "is willing to sacrifice the future of a 19-year-old American citizen to drive the point home ... then we feel the terrorists have won this particular battle in the war on terrorism."

Besides the four years of prison term that Moore sentenced Conley, he also ordered that she undergo three more years of supervised release and perform 100 hours of community service that requires interaction with ordinary people. He banned her from owning any black powder or explosive materials.