The Colorado resident who pleaded guilty to wanting to join ISIS jihad has changed her Muslim name and prepared a new hairstyle for her sentencing Friday.
Shannon Maureen Conley, 19, now prefers to go by the first name of Amatullah, she told CNN in an exclusive jailhouse interview the day before her sentencing.
The name means female “servant of Allah,” she said. A Muslim convert, she initially adopted the first name of Halima.
Conley attracted national attention last year when authorities arrested her on the jetway at Denver International Airport as she began a journey ultimately to marry a suspected ISIS member and become a nurse in an ISIS camp. She is a Colorado certified nurse aid.
Here are three things to know about her case:
1. What does she say about her crime?
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Conley told her parents that her knowledge of Islam was based solely on her own research she had conducted on the Internet.
Four days before her overseas flight on April 8, federal investigators again questioned Conley about whether she would engage in actual combat on the ISIS battlefield.
“If it was absolutely necessary, then yes. I wouldn’t like it…but I would do it,” Conley told authorities, according to court papers.
But, she added about her ISIS suitor in Syria: “He’s the man, he should be doing the fighting.”
Opinion: What lures Americans to Syria fight?
CNN’s Ana Cabrera and Sara Weisfeldt reported from Colorado. Michael Martinez wrote and reported from Los Angeles.
