New York Woman Convicted of Receiving Weapons Training From Islamic State

A New York woman whose father took her to Syria as a teenager and arranged her marriage to an Islamic State fighter has been convicted of receiving weapons training from the militant group. The verdict was delivered on Tuesday.

Prosecutors argued that Halima Salman, a US citizen, pledged loyalty to the extremist organization and took part in its activities willingly. Jurors saw a video of her holding an assault rifle, a photo of her with the group's flag and affectionate text messages she had sent to her husband.

Joseph Nocella Jr, the US attorney based in Brooklyn, said the verdict held Salman "accountable for joining forces with a terrorist organization." Assistant US attorney Amanda Shami told jurors in her closing argument that Salman received military training from a "violent, brutal, terrorist organization" responsible for attacks around the world.

The defense presented Salman, now 27, as a teenager who was unwittingly caught in Syria's civil war, first by her father and later by an extremist husband whose orders she had to follow. "You try to leave, it is death," she testified. She said she refused to be "married off" at 18 and repeatedly tried to obtain a divorce.

Born in Brooklyn, Salman was 17 in 2017 when her father took the family on what she believed was a trip to visit relatives in Turkey. Instead, their van crossed into Syria and was surrounded by masked gunmen. She testified that she was frightened and confused. "I do blame my father for a lot of things that happened," she said. She spent three months in housing run by the group before reuniting with her family, and they later moved twice after their homes were struck by airstrikes. Her father died in 2018 after being injured in an airstrike.

Salman described a marriage spent largely on domestic labor for her husband and mother-in-law. She said her last year there was the hardest, with constant bombings that sometimes forced them to live in 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 group detained her in Baghuz, Syria, in 2019, and US authorities arrested her when she returned to New York in 2024.

Prosecutors maintained that Salman was dishonest and had more agency than she claimed. On cross-examination she conceded she once sent her husband a religious song about Osama bin Laden. Prosecutors also cited two loving text messages to challenge her account of a poor marriage. As for the rifle video, which her husband recorded, Salman said she was only complying with his request to carry the weapon.

Salman, her mother and even her defense lawyers wept after the verdict. Salman and her mother later embraced across the railing separating the audience from the courtroom well. Jurors, who began deliberating Thursday, had indicated repeatedly on Monday that they were struggling to reach a unanimous decision. They declined to comment as they left court.

Her lawyers also declined to comment but are asking the judge to set aside the verdict and acquit her, which federal law allows if the evidence does not legally support a conviction. Such requests are common but rarely granted. The conviction carries a potential sentence of up to 10 years in prison, and sentencing is currently set for 2 February.

The US government designates the Islamic State group as a terrorist organization. It seized large areas 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.