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 weapons training from the militant group. Prosecutors said Halima Salman, a U.S. citizen, pledged allegiance to the extremist group and willingly participated in its activities. Jurors were shown a video of her holding an assault rifle, a photo of her holding the group’s flag and loving text messages she sent to her husband. Brooklyn-based US attorney Joseph Nocella Jr said in a statement that the verdict held Salman responsible for joining forces with a terrorist organization. continue. “If you try to leave, it’s death,” Salman testified. She said she refused to “get married” at age 18 and repeatedly tried to get a divorce. Salman, his mother and even his defense lawyers cried after hearing the verdict. Still crying, Salman and his mother later hugged each other across the railing between the hearing and the courtroom. Jurors, who began deliberating Thursday, had repeatedly indicated Monday that they were struggling to reach a unanimous decision. Members declined to comment as they left the courtroom after the verdict. Salman’s lawyers also declined to comment. They are asking the judge to overturn the verdict and acquit her, as federal law allows if a judge determines that evidence presented at a trial does not legally support a conviction. These types of requests are often made, but rarely granted. Salman’s conviction carries a potential sentence of up to 10 years in prison. Sentencing is currently scheduled for February 2. The Islamic State group, which the U.S. government designates as a terrorist group, seized much of Iraq and Syria in 2014 and declared the territory a caliphate. Despite its defeat in Iraq in 2017 and Syria two years later, the group still has sleeper cells carrying out deadly attacks in both countries. Born in Brooklyn, Salman was 17 when her father took the family on what she thought was a trip to visit relatives in Turkey in 2017. Instead, the van crossed into Syria, where masked gunmen surrounded them. Salman said she was scared and confused and had no idea where her father was taking them. “I blame my father for a lot of things that happened,” he testified. He said he spent three months in housing run by the Islamic State group before reuniting with his family. They moved twice because their houses were hit by airstrikes. On the first day of her marriage, Salman remembers, her husband told her: “Get up, stupid wife, it’s time for you to be a wife.” She spent much of her marriage doing domestic work for her husband and mother-in-law. Her father died after being injured in an airstrike in 2018. Prosecutors insisted Salman was dishonest and had more agency in Syria than she claimed. They got her to admit during questioning that she once sent a religious song about Osama bin Laden to her husband. Prosecutors also questioned Salman’s account of a poor marriage, citing two affectionate text messages she sent to her husband. “The evidence shows that the defendant received military training from a violent and brutal terrorist organization, an organization that is responsible for attacks around the world,” Assistant District Attorney Amanda Shami told jurors in a closing argument last week. Salman’s husband took a video of her holding an assault rifle, which prosecutors say she had been trained to use. When she testified, Salman said she was only complying with her husband’s request to carry the rifle. She recalled that her last year of marriage was particularly heartbreaking, as the constant bombings sometimes forced them to live on the streets, where she recalled seeing “dead bodies everywhere.” The couple eventually fled with other refugees in a truck, where she told her husband they were separating, and Salman testified that she never saw him again. to the Islamic State group. She was arrested by US authorities when she returned to New York in 2024.
