Thread: Mississippians charged with trying to travel abroad in hopes of joining Islam(update)

Mississippians charged with trying to travel abroad in hopes of joining Islamic State group

Published August 11, 2015Associated Press
In this Oct. 5, 2012 photo, Jaelyn Young, an honor student at Warren Central High School, poses for a photo in Vicksburg, Miss. Young and another Mississippi resident were arrested on Saturday, Aug. 8, 2015, on charges that they were trying to travel abroad to join the Islamic State militant group. (Melanie Thortis/The Vicksburg Evening Post via the AP) (The Associated Press)


JACKSON, Miss. – A federal court hearing continues Tuesday for two Mississippi residents arrested on charges that they were trying to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State militant group.

Criminal charges filed Saturday say 19-year-old Jaelyn Delshaun Young and 22-year-old Muhammad Oda Dakhlalla were arrested that morning at Golden Triangle Regional Airport near Columbus, Mississippi, just before boarding a flight with tickets bound for Istanbul.

The charges say the two, in online communications, repeatedly told undercover FBI agents they wanted to join the group fighting to create an Islamic state.

An affidavit by an FBI agent says both confessed after their arrest.

Both are charged with attempting and conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist group. It was unclear Monday which lawyers represent them.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/08/11...ining-islamic/

Charge: 2 Mississippi residents aimed to join Islamic State


By JEFF AMY
Associated Press
Published: August 11, 2015

JACKSON, Mississippi — Two Mississippi residents were arrested over the weekend on charges that they were trying to travel abroad to join the Islamic State militant group.

A criminal charge filed Saturday says Jaelyn Delshaun Young, 19, and Muhammad Oda Dakhlalla, 22, were arrested that morning at Golden Triangle Regional Airport near Columbus, Mississippi.

Both are charged with attempting and conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist group. A hearing on their detention began Monday in Oxford according to WTVA-TV, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Chad Lamar said it will continue Tuesday. Lamar refused to comment on the case, saying federal officials would release a statement Tuesday.

The charges indicate that both confessed their plans to FBI agents after their arrest Saturday. It was unclear late Monday which lawyers were representing the two.

Both Young and Dakhlalla are U.S. citizens. Mississippi State University spokesman Sid Salter said records show Dakhlalla graduated in May with a bachelor's degree in psychology. He said Young was enrolled until May as a sophomore chemistry major but had not enrolled for classes since. Young, originally from Vicksburg, was a 2013 honors graduate from Warren Central High School, The Vicksburg Post reported.

The charge indicates that undercover FBI agents interacted online with Young beginning in May about her desire to travel to Syria to join the group. The charge states that her Twitter page said the only thing keeping her from traveling to Syria was her need to earn money. "I just want to be there," she is quoted as saying. In later conversations peppered with Arabic phrases, she said she planned a "nikkah," or Islamic marriage to Dakhlalla so they could travel without a chaperone under Islamic law.

In June, the first FBI agent passed Young off to a second FBI agent posing as an Islamic State facilitator. The charge says Young asked the second agent for help crossing from Turkey to Syria, saying "We don't know Turkey at all very well (I haven't even travelled outside U.S. before.)"

Young specified her skills with math and chemistry and said she and Dakhlalla would like to be medics treating the wounded. Later, the charge says, she told the second FBI agent that Dakhlalla could help with the Islamic State's Internet media, saying he "really wants to correct the falsehoods heard here" and the "U.S. media is all lies when regarding" the group.

Dakhlalla told the first FBI agent in an online conversation in June that he was "good with computers, education and media" and that his father had approved him and Young to get married. In July, the charges say, he expressed a desire to become a fighter for the group. "I am willing to fight," he is quoted as saying.

Young later told the FBI that she and Dakhlalla had gotten married June 6 and they planned to claim they were traveling on their honeymoon as a cover story.

The FBI said Dakhlalla and Young both expressed impatience with how long it was taking for them to be issued passports, and the charges say Dakhlalla paid $340 to expedite passport processing on July 1.

Though the charges say earlier messages indicate the couple planned to fly to Greece and then take a bus to Turkey, the couple later bought tickets on Delta Air Lines leaving Golden Triangle bound for Atlanta, Amsterdam and ultimately Istanbul. Young expressed confidence that security at the small airport would not detect them.

http://www.stripes.com/news/us/charg...state-1.362367

by WARNER TODD HUSTON
11 Aug 2016
Vicksburg, MS

A Mississippi woman, who was arrested last summer for attempting to fly to Syria to join the Islamic State and then pleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges has been handed a twelve-year prison sentence.

Jaelyn Delshaun Young, 20, was arrested on August 8 of last year along with her 22-year-old boyfriend, Muhammad Oda Dakhlalla, at an airport near Columbus, Mississippi. Federal authorities said the pair intended to join the Islamic State forces in Syria. They were officially charged with attempting and conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist group.

Authorities say she was radicalized as a student at the Mississippi State University.

Federal investigators presented a long series of Internet communications in court showing Young’s efforts to arrange passage to Syria for herself and her boyfriend as well as communications between the young woman and representatives of the ISIS terror group in the Middle East.

Young, the daughter of a Vicksburg, MS, police officer, was facing up to twenty years. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock passed the sentence of twelve years as the woman’s parents pleaded for leniency, according to the Associated Press.

The convicted woman sobbed during the proceedings and claimed she was ashamed of her actions.

Her boyfriend faces his own sentencing on August 24.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...ison-sentence/