Federal judge denies Mississippi pair bail over Islamic State charges

OXFORD, Miss. (AP) — A young Mississippi couple who are charged with attempting to join the Islamic State were ordered held without bail today, pending federal grand jury action on the charges.

Nineteen-year-old Jaelyn Delshaun Young and 22-year-old Muhammad "Mo" Dakhlalla, who were arrested at a Mississippi airport just before boarding a flight with tickets bound for Istanbul, went before U.S. Magistrate Judge S. Allan Alexander today in Oxford.

Alexander denied bail, saying that even though the pair have never been in trouble with the law and have relatives willing to oversee their home confinement, she believed their desire commit terrorism is "probably still there."

During the two-day hearing, prosecutors had urged Alexander to deny bail, citing statements Young and Dakhlalla made to undercover agents and handwritten farewell letters they left for their families saying they would never return.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Clay Joyner likened them to Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, saying that like him, they could commit violence with knives, vehicles or homemade weapons.

"They don't need a gun to do harm," Joyner said. "They don't need military training to do harm. What they need is a violent, extremist ideology, and that's exactly what they have espoused."