In September 2017, U.S. District Judge sentenced Keonna Thomas to eight years, crediting the time she served while the justice system processed her case.
Thomas, a Philadelphia woman, was a vocal advocate for the Islamic State online for more than a year before her April 2015 arrest, using platforms like Twitter and Skype to advance its agenda.
In the sentencing memorandum, of her hearing, Thomas’ gender is highly emphasized, and her case is contextualized with clichés about women in terrorism. Thomas is described as a naïve, misled woman, whose desire for love and romance drove her to extremism.
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(page 3): “Had the government not arrested Thomas, she would have followed through with her plan to travel to Syria to join ISIL, risking her own life and leaving her two young children behind in Philadelphia without their mother. In doing so, she would have provided ISIL with more than her mere presence and loyalty, and even more than the possible martyrdom about which she communicated online. For Western women serve ISIL not only as propaganda disseminators, recruiters, wives, and mothers, but also as valuable propaganda tools, i.e., their participation is perceived to send a strong message to the United States about ISIL’s strength, validity, and global reach. Thus, Thomas’s plans with her associates and her travel to Syria would have had very serious negative consequences. […] For all of the above reasons, the government submits that Thomas’s crime was gravely serious, and that a lengthy sentence of incarceration is appropriate and necessary both to punish Thomas and to send a strong message of deterrence to other like-minded people who might be inclined to travel to join ISIL.”
(page 6): “The defense argues that Thomas posed and poses no real danger because she is not capable of a suicide bombing. However, the government’s expert in this case issued a report outlining ISIL’s history of aggressive recruitment of women to serve as propaganda disseminators, recruiters, wives helping soldiers prepare for combat, and mothers raising future fighters. In addition, Western women, particularly American women, were of extra value to ISIL because their participation is perceived to send a strong message to the United States about ISIL’s strength, validity, and global reach. Thus, Thomas’s criminal conduct would not only have served ISIL but would have strengthened ISIL greatly in the process.”
(page 7): “The seriousness of Thomas’s conduct is punctuated by the fact that it would have involved abandoning her two young children. Although Thomas’s sentencing submission attaches letter after letter describing her devotion to her children, the government submits that her devotion to ISIL was far stronger.”
(page 8): “It is true, however, that examination of Thomas’s personal history and characteristics reveals some mitigating factors, which are described in documents filed under seal. Thomas has had a difficult life, marked by abuse and neglect. And while these difficulties in no way lesson the harm caused by her criminal violation, they may somewhat explain her vulnerability to it.”
The full sentencing memorandum can be found here>>
