New York Woman Convicted of Receiving Weapons Training From ISIS After Being Taken to Syria as a Teen

A federal jury has convicted a New York woman who was taken to Syria as a teenager and later married to an Islamic State fighter of receiving weapons training from the militant group. The verdict came Tuesday.

Halima Salman, a U.S. citizen born in Brooklyn, is now 27. Prosecutors argued that she pledged loyalty to the group and took part in its activities willingly. Jurors were shown a video of her holding an assault rifle, a photo of her with the group's flag, and affectionate text messages she sent to her husband.

U.S. attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said in a statement that the verdict holds Salman accountable for joining forces with a terrorist organization. "ISIS ravaged Syria and caused havoc across the globe; our Office will continue to prosecute those who supported its murderous reign," he said.

The defense portrayed Salman as a teenager caught in Syria's civil war, first by her father and then by an extremist husband whose orders she had to obey. Testifying in her own defense, she said, "You try to leave, it is death." She also said she refused to be "married off" at 18 and repeatedly tried to get a divorce.

According to her account, Salman was 17 in 2017 when her father took the family on what she believed was a visit to relatives in Turkey. Instead, the van crossed into Syria, where masked gunmen surrounded them. "I do blame my father for a lot of things that happened," she testified. She spent three months in housing run by the Islamic State group before reuniting with her family, who later moved twice after their homes were hit by airstrikes. Court documents say she married a German-Afghan fighter known as Abu Ali. Her father died in 2018 after being injured in an airstrike.

Prosecutors argued that Salman was dishonest and had more freedom of choice than she claimed. On cross-examination, she conceded that she once sent her husband a religious song about Osama bin Laden. They also cited two loving texts to challenge her description of a poor marriage. Her husband recorded the video of her with the rifle, which prosecutors said she had been trained to use. Salman said she carried it only because he asked her to. Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Shami told jurors in closing arguments that the evidence showed Salman "received military training from a violent, brutal, terrorist organization."

Salman said the final year of her marriage was the hardest, with constant bombings that at times forced them to live on the streets amid "dead bodies everywhere." She testified that she told her husband they would separate while the couple fled in a truck with other refugees, and that she never saw him again. Forces opposed to the Islamic State group detained her in Baghouz, Syria, in 2019, and U.S. authorities arrested her when she returned to New York in 2024.

Salman, her mother and even her defense attorneys wept after the verdict was read. Salman and her mother later embraced across the railing in the courtroom. Jurors began deliberating Thursday and had repeatedly signaled Monday that they were struggling to reach a unanimous decision. They declined to comment after the verdict, as did the defense lawyers, who are asking the judge to set aside the verdict and acquit her. Such requests are common but rarely granted.

The conviction carries a maximum of 10 years in prison, and sentencing is set for Feb. 2. John A. Eisenberg, the Assistant Attorney General for National Security, said there is "simply no excuse for aligning with or receiving military training from an organization responsible for such suffering."

The Islamic State group seized large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014 and declared a caliphate. It was defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, but sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in both countries. Kurdish forces hold about 2,200 foreign relatives of suspected fighters in a camp in northeastern Syria, and the Program on Extremism has identified 83 American adults who traveled to Syria or Iraq since 2011 and were affiliated with jihadist groups.