A 19-year-old Colorado woman became the latest American to admit to join a Middle East terrorist group, pleading guilty on Wednesday to conspiring to provide support to ISIS militants in Syria, Yahoo News reported.
Shannon Conley was first noticed by the FBI when she showed up last fall at a church in Arvada, Colorado, wearing Muslim clothing.
George Morrison, the church's pastor, told the Denver Post that while he believed Conley was just a "terrorist wannabe," he "had to take her sketching of interior rooms of the church seriously."
Conley reportedly told investigators, "If they think I'm a terrorist, I'll give them something to think I am."
Conley, a certified nurse's aide, received military training in a program run by the U.S. Army Explorers.
The woman was arrested at Denver International Airport in April with a one-way ticket to Turkey. She had previously told investigators she wanted to wage jihad in the Middle East, according to prosecutors, and ignored repeated face-to-face warnings by the FBI that her plans were illegal. Conley faces up to 5 years in federal prison.
She is one of what federal authorities say is a frightening number of Americans offering to join or support terrorist organizations in the Middle East.
A Long Island man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to attempting to join al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, also known as AQAP or Ansar al-Sharia, after claiming he attempted to travel from New York to Yemen in 2012 to support the terrorist group.
According to prosecutors, Marcos Alonso Zea, a 26-year-old from Brentwood, New York, boarded a flight at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Jan. 4, 2012, and was on his way to Yemen when he was apprehended in London and returned to the United States.
Upon returning, he "went to work recruiting others to go in his stead," FBI Assistant Director George Venizelos said on Tuesday. One of those recruits, 18-year-old Justin Kaliebe from Bay Shore, New York, was arrested by federal counterterrorism agents at JFK in 2013 on suspicion of attempting to wage violent jihad. Kaliebe was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
