The young Colorado woman convicted of trying to aid Islamic State militants in Syria will be sentenced Friday in federal court.
Shannon Maureen Conley, 19, pleaded guilty in September to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and agreed to help authorities identify and prosecute those trying to recruit others into militant groups in exchange for a lighter sentence. She faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Conley, described as a bright but lonely young woman who converted to Islam a few years ago, was arrested last spring when federal agents intercepted her at Denver International Airport. She told authorities she was meeting Yousr Mouelhi, an Islamic State fighter in Syria whom she met through the Internet. Mouelhi had promised marriage.
After her guilty plea, Judge Raymond P. Moore ordered additional psychiatric testing before sentencing.
Conley decided to cooperate with federal authorities because she was "horrified" after learning of the atrocities and slaughter committed by a group she once wanted to join, said Robert Pepin, her lawyer. The public defender has described his client as a woman of faith who made bad choices and was led "terribly astray."
The case attracted worldwide attention and was one of the first in the United States to illustrate the growing trend of Islamic militant groups using social media and the Internet to recruit young women and girls to join their cause as potential brides, authorities have said.
In the months before her arrest, federal agents met with Conley multiple times and tried repeatedly to dissuade her from her plans, suggesting at one point that if she wanted to help Muslims in the Middle East she should join a relief organization. But she was resolute after becoming increasingly radicalized and believed she would be helping to wage a holy war, court documents said.
Living at home in the Denver suburb of Arvada, Conley eventually told her parents of her wish to marry her Internet suitor. They refused permission. When her father found a one-way ticket to a town in Turkey near the Syrian border, he called the FBI and turned her in.
Her lawyer and others have suggested that phone call and her later arrest may have saved her life.
Five months after Conley's arrest, three other suburban Denver teenage girls -- a 16-year-old of Sudanese descent and two sisters, 15 and 17, of Somali descent -- were stopped in Germany as they attempted to travel to Syria, also presumably to marry Islamic State militants.
The girls, who have not been named, were not charged and returned to their parents, who had reported them missing Oct. 17 along with their passports and about $2,000.
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