Cheerleader Sentenced For Trying To Join ISIS

Jaelyn Young was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison for trying to join ISIS.

Cheerleader Jaelyn Young Sentenced For Trying To Join ISIS.

Oxford, Mississippi – A Mississippi woman, Jaelyn Young, was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison on a terrorism charge after she was caught trying to leave the country to join ISIS.

Jaelyn Young pleaded guilty in March to one count of conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization. She faced up to 20 years in prison, but was only sentenced to 12 years.

Her fiance, Muhammad Dakhlalla, also pleaded guilty March 11 to one count of conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization. Dakhlalla’s sentencing is in two weeks.

They were both arrested in 2015 as they tried to board a flight for Istanbul, Turkey.

“I found the contacts, made arrangements, planned the departure,” Young wrote in a farewell note to her family. “I am guilty of what you soon will find out.”

Jaelyn Young was the daughter of a school administrator and a police officer. She was also a former honor student and cheerleader. She converted to Islam while in college, and she started to wear a burqa and distance herself from friends and family. She believed that it was best to avoid the non-muslim influence of friend and family.

Young began to show sympathy for ISIS in her social media posts after she viewed a lot of terrorist propaganda online. Her social media posts are what first caught the attention of the FBI.

“Young continually asked Dakhlalla when they were going to join (the Islamic State group) and began to express hatred for the US government and to express support for the implementation of Sharia law in the United States,” prosecutors wrote.

In May 2015 she began to seek advice online for how to travel to Syria, and that’s when she contacted undercover FBI agents.

While it’s not easy to believe that a non-muslim all-American college student would fall into terrorist propaganda, Jaelyn Young’s story is an example of how that is not the case.