A Starkville, Mississippi, man has been sentenced to serve 8 years in prison for conspiring to provide support to ISIS.
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Muhammad Dakhlalla pleaded guilty in March to one count of conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization.
Dakhlalla was sentenced to eight years in prison Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Oxford, Miss. His fiancée Jaelyn Delshun Young, 20, pleaded guilty March 30th, and was sentenced to 12 years in prison for the same charge.
Prosecutors said that, after watching pro-Islamic State group videos, she began to view the fighters as liberators.
Dakhlalla thanked by name the lead Federal Bureau of Investigation agent on the team that arrested the pair at an airport near Columbus, Mississippi, in August 2015. “I denounce them. I condemn them”.
Dennis Harmon, a family friend, told reporters outside the courthouse that while “we understand ISIS to be the Ku Klux Klan of somebody in Islam”, Muhammad “thought that they were one step further [ahead], but he was wrong”.
“Our story will be that we are newlyweds on our honeymoon”, the young woman allegedly wrote. Dakhlalla, in online contacts, said he was good with computers and media and wanted to contribute to the Islamic State’s struggle. According to the factual basis documents, Young told the undercover agents that she was preparing for “hijjrah” which references to traveling to Islamic State.
“Unless you were living under a rock, he should have been aware of ISIS”, Joiner said. “I was about to do something reckless and stupid”.
The FBI reports that in their interactions with Young, they discovered she was ready to swear allegiance to the Islamic State.
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They said Young approvingly cited a video of a man accused of being gay being thrown off a roof to his death by militants and also expressed approval of the shooting of five members of the military in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
