A 19-year-old Colorado woman who tried to travel to Syria to wage jihad with Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants was sentenced Friday to four years in prison.
Shannon Conley was arrested at Denver International Airport in April where she was bound for the Syria–Turkey border. Court documents revealed that Conley intended to join a man she described as her "suitor" and an ISIS militant.
Conley, who converted to Islam, voluntarily met on numerous occasions with FBI agents and detailed her desire to carry out Jihad in a foreign country to defend her faith.
In a Denver federal court Friday, Conley wore a black and tan headscarf, telling a judge she had disavowed jihad and had been misled in her beliefs, the Associated Press reported.
"Even though I supported a jihad, it was never to hurt anyone," she said, according to the Denver Post. "It was always in the defense of Muslims."
Conley pleaded guilty in September to conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist group under a deal that required her to offer information on other Americans with similar aspirations.
"That woman is in need of psychiatric help," U.S. District Judge Raymond Moore said before sentencing Conley. "She's a bit of a mess."
On her Facebook page, Conley had changed her named to Halima and listed her work and education as "Slave Of Allah."
Authorities originally began looking into Conley in late 2013 when she was reported for "suspicious activity" outside a Christian church near her Denver home.
According to court documents, on Nov. 5, 2013, the pastor of the Faith Bible Chapel in Arvada, Colo., reported seeing Conley near the church with a notebook diagramming the campus. When confronted by police, Conley reportedly asked, "Why is this church afraid of a terrorist attack?"
During a search of Conley's home, FBI agents discovered a number of videos featuring American-born radical Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and other jihadists. Awlaki was killed in a targeted U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011.
"Conspiring to providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization is a serious federal crime," U.S. Attorney John Walsh said in a statement Friday. "The defendant in this case got lucky. The FBI arrested her after determining that she had been radicalized and planned to travel to Syria to support the brutal foreign terrorist organizations operating there. Had she succeeded in her plan to get to Syria, she would likely have been brutalized, killed or sent back to the United States to commit other crimes."
BuzzFeed News reporter Mike Hayes contributed to this report.