A New York woman whose father took her to Syria as a teenager and arranged her marriage to an Islamic State fighter was convicted Tuesday of receiving military training from the terrorist organization.
Prosecutors argued that Halima Salman, a U.S. citizen, pledged allegiance to ISIS and knowingly took part in the group’s activities. Jurors saw a video of Salman holding an assault rifle, a photograph of her beside the group’s flag and affectionate text messages she sent to her husband.
“Today’s verdict holds Salman accountable for joining a terrorist organization,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said in a statement. “ISIS devastated Syria and spread violence around the world. Our office will continue prosecuting those who supported its murderous rule.”
The defense presented Salman, now 27, as a teenager unwillingly pulled into Syria’s civil war—first by her father and later by an extremist husband whose commands she felt unable to defy.
“If you try to leave, you die,” Salman testified. She said she resisted being “married off” at 18 and made repeated efforts to obtain a divorce.
Salman’s mother is American, and the family had traveled from the United States to Syria when Salman was young.
Salman, her mother and members of her defense team broke down in tears after the verdict was read. Later, still crying, Salman and her mother embraced across the railing separating the courtroom audience from the well.
Jurors began deliberating Thursday and indicated several times Monday that they were struggling to reach a unanimous verdict. They declined to speak with reporters as they left the courthouse.
AP Photo/Frank Franklin II 
Salman’s attorneys also declined to comment. They have asked the judge to overturn the verdict and acquit her, a remedy permitted under federal law when the evidence does not legally support a conviction. Such motions are common but rarely succeed.
Salman could face up to 10 years in prison. Her sentencing hearing is scheduled for Feb. 2.
The Islamic State, designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, captured broad areas of Iraq and Syria in 2014 and proclaimed a caliphate. Although the group was defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, sleeper cells continue to launch deadly attacks in both countries.
“Dead bodies everywhere”
Born in Brooklyn, Salman was 17 when her father took the family on what she believed was a trip to visit relatives in Turkey in 2017. Instead, their van crossed into Syria, where masked gunmen surrounded them. Salman testified that she was frightened and confused and did not know where her father was taking the family.
“I do blame my father for many of the things that happened,” she said.
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Salman testified that she spent three months in housing controlled by ISIS before rejoining her family. They moved twice after airstrikes destroyed or damaged their homes.
According to court documents, she married Abu Ali, a German-Afghan ISIS fighter.
Salman recalled that on the first day of their marriage, her husband told her, “Get up, stupid wife. It’s time for you to be a wife.”
She spent much of the marriage performing household chores for her husband and mother-in-law. Her father died from injuries sustained in an airstrike in 2018.
Prosecutors argued that Salman was not truthful and had exercised more choice in Syria than she acknowledged. During cross-examination, she admitted sending her husband a religious song about Osama bin Laden. Prosecutors also challenged her description of the marriage as abusive, pointing to two affectionate messages she sent him.
“The evidence shows that the defendant received military training from a violent, brutal terrorist organization—one responsible for attacks around the world,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Shami told jurors during closing arguments last week.
Salman’s husband recorded her holding an assault rifle, which prosecutors said she had been trained to use. On the witness stand, Salman said she carried the weapon only because her husband ordered her to do so.
Jane Rosenberg / REUTERS 
She said the final year of the marriage was especially traumatic. Relentless bombardment sometimes forced the couple to sleep outdoors, where she remembered seeing “dead bodies everywhere.”
Eventually, Salman and her husband fled with other refugees in a truck. She told him they would separate, and testified that she never saw him again.
Opposing forces detained Salman in Baghouz, Syria, in 2019. U.S. authorities arrested her after she returned to New York in 2024.
Kurdish forces continue to hold about 2,200 foreign relatives of suspected ISIS fighters at a camp in northeastern Syria, an official told AFP earlier this month.
The Program on Extremism has identified 83 American adults who traveled to Syria or Iraq since 2011 and were affiliated with jihadist groups operating there.
“The atrocities committed by ISIS—including mass executions, sexual slavery and the systematic terrorization of civilians—are among the gravest crimes of our time,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg said in a statement Tuesday. “There is no excuse for aligning with or receiving military training from an organization responsible for such suffering. Today’s verdict makes clear that those who support this death cult will be identified and prosecuted.”
