A Mississippi couple charged with supporting the Islamic State and accused of intending to use their honeymoon as a cover story so they could travel to join the group pleaded guilty this month, according to federal authorities.
They were among more than half a dozen people in the United States charged with actions related to the Islamic State who pleaded guilty, were convicted or sentenced over the last month, a surge of activity that occurred as worldwide attention has focused on the militant group’s reach in Europe after attacks in Brussels and Paris.
Jaelyn Delshaun Young and Muhammad Oda Dakhlalla — both of Starkville, Miss. — were arrested last summer and accused of supporting the group. According to the criminal complaint, filed in federal court last August, Young told an FBI employee that the couple hoped to travel to Turkey before crossing into Syria.
“Our story will be that we are newlyweds on our honeymoon,” Young told the FBI employee in a discussion made through social media channels, according to an FBI affidavit.
In another message, Young is quoted praising the gunman who killed four Marines when he opened fire at a pair of military facilities in Tennessee last summer.
The couple planned to fly to Amsterdam before heading to Istanbul. Young also told an FBI employee that her husband was worried the couple would be arrested in Turkey, but she said she was not concerned about being arrested in Turkey when American authorities could just “arrest us before leaving.” They were arrested a few days later after traveling to a Mississippi airport to catch their flight.
Young, 20, pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiring to provide material support to the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Dakhlalla, her 23-year-old husband, pleaded guilty to the same charge earlier this month. Both of them face up to 20 years in prison and a possible fine of $250,000 and will be sentenced at a later date, authorities said.
These two were among 80 people across the United States who have been charged in connection with the Islamic State. So far, more than 30 people have been convicted or pleaded guilty.
This month alone, four people in the country have pleaded guilty to conspiring to support the Islamic State. In addition to the married Mississippi couple, two men — one in Ohio, the other in Virginia — pleaded guilty in separate cases recently. The Ohio man — Amir Said Rahman Al-Ghazi, 39, who is also known as Robert C. McCollum — was accused of trying to buy an AK-47 rifle and saying he wanted to carry out an attack in the United States. In Virginia, 28-year-old Joseph Hassan Farrokh was accused of planning to travel to Syria to join the group.
Other Islamic State-related cases in the United States in recent weeks have resulted in convictions as well as a sentence of decades in prison. An Arizona man charged with helping two men who opened fire outside a “Muhammad cartoon context” in Texas last year was found guilty of supporting the group, as well as plotting with the men.
According to federal prosecutors, Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, 44, conspired with the other two men to attack military bases and the Super Bowl, as well as the cartoon contest, although Kareem did not go with them to that contest. In a statement after Kareem was convicted, John P. Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security, called this case “the first jury trial in the country involving a homeland attack committed in the name of ISIL.”
In another trial, a New York jury found Tairod Nathan Webster Pugh, 48, an Air Force veteran, guilty of trying to provide support to the Islamic State after he was accused of trying to travel to Syria to join the group. The Justice Department said it was the first time a trial jury had convicted someone accused of trying to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State.
And in another recent New York case, a Rochester man named Mufid Elfgeeh, 32, was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison after he was charged with recruiting Islamic State members and trying to send people to Syria to fight.
