Teen Wants To Wed MySpace Mideast Love

A teenager who flew to the Middle East to be with a man she met on MySpace.com said Friday that she intends to marry him.

"I love him very much," 17-year-old Katherine Lester said of Abdullah Jimzawi, who is 20 and lives in the West Bank.

Lester appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" with her father and stepmother. Jimzawi also spoke with ABC during a taped portion of the segment, describing how the pair "can't live without each other."

After hearing what Jimzawi said, Lester began weeping.

"It's true," she said. "I love you. That's all I can say."

Lester, who turned 17 on Wednesday, was en route to a Tel Aviv, Israel, airport earlier this month when she was intercepted in Amman, Jordan, by U.S. authorities who seized her passport and put her on a flight back to the United States. She is from Guilford, Mich., a village about 80 miles north of Detroit.

Jimzawi, in a recent interview with The Associated Press, said the two planned to marry and she planned to convert to Islam. He currently lives with his parents. Lester, a Christian, declined to say Friday whether she intended to convert.

The two have resumed communication online since Lester returned home without ever meeting him.

"Our initial reaction was to isolate her, to lock her up and just keep her safe here in America," said her father, Terry Lester. "But that's unrealistic because you can see the love they have for each other."

Tuscola County authorities filed a runaway juvenile petition against Lester earlier this week, and a judge ordered her to give up her passport and undergo counseling. If the judge finds that Lester was a runaway, she could be placed under court supervision until she turns 18.