ABERDEEN – Jaelyn Delshaun Young, once a high school cheerleader and university student, admitted Tuesday that she tried to join the Islamic State terrorist organization.
A 20-year-old Warren County native, Young pleaded guilty to one federal charge that she conspired to provide material support to ISIS, also called ISIL.
Young and her fiance’, Muhammad Dakhlalla, 23, a former Mississippi State student who entered a guilty plea to ISIS-related charges earlier this month, were arrested in 2015 on suspicion of conspiring to provide material support or resources to ISIS.
She entered the U.S. District courtroom with wrists and ankles shackled, and leaned forward at the waist toward the podium microphone to respond to Chief Judge Sharion Aycock’s questions.
“Yes ma’am,” she responded when Aycock asked if she were guilty.
The prosecutor, assistant U.S. Attorney Clay Joyner, told Aycock that between May 2015 and Aug. 8, 2015, Young knew ISIL was a terrorist organization and sought “to provide personnel” to the group.
In an Aug. 8, 2015, complaint filed by the FBI, Young was reported living in Starkville, had been a college student there, worked in a campus laboratory and repeatedly had online contact about her plans to fly from Columbus to Amsterdam, Netherlands, and on to Istanbul, Turkey.
The FBI also said she and Dakhlalla admitted they were trying to join ISIS. They apparently purchased flight tickets with her mother’s credit card, without her mother’s permission.
Her plea came before a small audience of reporters, attorneys and Young’s parents, who listened with sober expressions on their faces. Her father is a police officer.
He told the court that if the case had gone to trial, the government could have proved Young sought to join ISIL. He quoted some of Young’s online conversations with undercover FBI agents.
“I need help crossing from Turkey to Syria,” Joyner said she told them, adding as a chemistry student that she offered to help with medical aid and Dakhlalla with media for the organization.
The pair apparently left letters for their families, saying they were gone.
On March 11, Dakhlalla pleaded guilty to one count of seeking to provide “material support or resources” to the terrorist organization. He faces up to 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and a lifetime on supervised release.
With her guilty plea agreement, signed March 22, Young faces similar punishment.
Their classifications as “terrorists” forecasts the likelihood of lengthy sentences.
However, Aycock is not bound by what their pre-sentence reports advise about punishment.
“Do you understand that the guidelines are not mandatory?” Aycock asked her.
“Yes, ma’am,” Young responded.
Before entering her plea, the petite former homecoming maid and honor student sat at a table with her attorneys Dennis Sweet III and Dennis Sweet IV of Jackson. She wore a two-piece, orange inmate uniform with “Lafayette County Detention Center” stamped across the back of her slender shoulders.Joyner, in reading her plea agreement, said Young will not face any other charges related to the current issues.
Aycock did not set a sentence date. After pleading guilty, Young returned to the custody of U.S. Marshals.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.