The Colorado woman who admitted guilt in wanting to become an ISIS bride and join its jihad terrorism should be sentenced to four years in prison to send a message of deterrence, prosecutors said Friday in court.
That recommendation was one year less than the maximum sentence that a Colorado judge could impose on Shannon Maureen Conley, 19, who pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist group.
Her plea was made in exchange for a reduced charge with a lighter sentence.
During Friday’s sentencing hearing, U.S. Attorney Greg Holloway said Conley has been cooperative and willingly provided information to investigators. He argued that a four-year sentence would send a message that the U.S. government uses restraint, but consequences are serious in terror cases.
But Judge Raymond P. Moore interrupted the prosecutor at one point saying, “That woman is in need of psychiatric help.”
“I’m not saying that her decisions were all a product of mental illness… But she’s a bit of a mess,” the judge said.
The defense had yet to present its side Friday, and a sentence is expected to be made by the court late in the afternoon.
The judge referenced Conley’s psychiatric report that stated “she is not a terrorist.”
The judge also alluded to a series of events from 2011 to her arrest in 2014.
“There is a history of events that would make for a bad movie,” the judge said.
Conley almost agreed to marry three different people in a matter of months, according to the judge.
The prosecutor said that Conley was “pathologically naive.”
Added the judge: “She has no history in the criminal justice system. She is very young…. Teenagers make dumb decisions a lot.”
Conley looked relaxed in court. She smile at times while taking with lawyers before hearing. She wore a blue and white jail uniform, a head scarf and glasses.
Conley now prefers to go by first name of Amatullah, she told CNN during a visit to her jailhouse the day before her sentencing.
The name means female “servant of Allah,” she said. Conley initially took the name Halima after converting to Islam. She will become one of the first Americans sentenced for conspiracy to support ISIS.
Conley attracted national attention last year after authorities arrested her at Denver International Airport. Investigators said she told them she was going to Turkey to await word from an ISIS member in Syria — a man she met on the Internet and planned to marry.
According to court documents, she intended to become a nurse in an ISIS camp. She is a Colorado certified nurse’s aide.
Her parents, AnaMaria and John Conley, were aware of their daughter’s conversion to Islam but didn’t know about her interest in extreme Islam or jihad.
John Conley reportedly caught his daughter talking to her “suitor,” a 32-year-old Tunisian man, on Skype. The couple asked for the father’s blessing, but he said no.
On April 1, the father called the FBI to report that he had found her ticket for an April 8 flight to Turkey on his desk.
The FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force were tipped off to Conley’s suspicious activity in November 2013, when the pastor and security director of Faith Bible Chapel told local police that Conley was wandering around campus and taking notes, court papers said.
The church’s main campus in Arvada was the scene of a gunman’s fatal shooting in 2007.
When church staff confronted Conley about her notes, she allegedly told them: “Why is the church worried about a terrorist attack?” and that terrorists are “… not allowed to kill aging adults and little children,” according to court papers.
Church officials asked her not to return.
In an interview with the FBI the following month, she said she joined the U.S. Army Explorers to receive military training and intended to use the firearm skills to go overseas to wage jihad, court papers said.
Over five months, authorities interviewed her seven times.
Conley told them that “jihad must be waged to protect Muslim nations,” court papers said. She preferred to wage jihad overseas, to be with jihad fighters.
Conley told investigators she “would be defending Muslims on the Muslim homeland against people who are trying to kill them,” according to court documents.
Conley told her parents that her knowledge of Islam was based solely on research she had conducted on the Internet.