Former American ISIS Teen Bride Convicted of Receiving Weapons Training

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 argued that Halima Salman, a U.S. citizen, pledged allegiance to the extremist organization and willingly took part in its 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.

“With today’s verdict, Salman is held accountable for joining forces with a terrorist organization,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said in a statement. “ISIS ravaged Syria and caused havoc across the globe; our Office will continue to prosecute those who supported its murderous reign.”

Salman’s defense presented her as a teenager who was unknowingly drawn into Syria’s civil war—first by her father and later by an extremist husband whose demands she was forced to obey.

“You try to leave, it is death,” 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 traveled from the United States to Syria when Salman was young.

Salman, her mother and even her defense attorneys wept after the verdict was announced. Still crying, Salman and her mother later embraced across the railing separating the audience from the courtroom well.

The jury began deliberating Thursday and indicated Monday that its members were having difficulty reaching a unanimous decision. Jurors declined to comment as they left the courthouse after the verdict.

Salman’s attorneys also declined to comment. They are asking the judge to overturn the verdict and acquit her, a remedy federal law permits when a judge determines that trial evidence cannot legally support a conviction. Such motions are common but rarely succeed.

The conviction carries a potential sentence of up to 10 years in prison. Sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 2.

The Islamic State, designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, seized large areas of Iraq and Syria in 2014 and declared a caliphate. Although the group was defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, sleeper cells continue to carry out deadly attacks in both countries.

“Dead bodies everywhere”

Born in Brooklyn, Salman was 17 when her father took the family on what she believed would be 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 a lot of things that happened,” she testified.

Salman said she spent three months in housing controlled by the Islamic State before reuniting with her family. They moved twice after airstrikes struck their homes.

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While in Syria, she married Abu Ali, a German-Afghan Islamic State fighter, according to court documents.

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 domestic work for her husband and mother-in-law. Her father died in 2018 after suffering injuries in an airstrike.

Prosecutors contended that Salman was not truthful and had exercised more control over her life in Syria than she acknowledged. During cross-examination, they got her to admit that she had once sent her husband a religious song about Osama bin Laden. They also challenged her description of the marriage as abusive, pointing to two affectionate text messages she sent him.

“The evidence shows that the defendant received military training from a violent, brutal, terrorist organization—an organization that is responsible for attacks across the world,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Shami told jurors during closing arguments last week.

Salman’s husband recorded a video of her holding an assault rifle, which prosecutors said she had been trained to operate. On the witness stand, Salman testified that she was merely complying with her husband’s demand to carry the weapon.

She recalled that her last year of marriage was particularly harrowing, as constant bombings sometimes forced them to live in 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 going to separate, and Salman testified that she never saw him again.

She was detained in Baghouz, Syria, in 2019 by forces opposed to the Islamic State group. She was arrested by U.S. authorities when she returned to New York in 2024.

Kurdish forces still hold around 2,200 foreign relatives of suspected Islamic State fighters in a northeastern Syria camp, an official there 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 there.

“The atrocities committed by ISIS, including mass executions, sexual slavery, and the systematic terrorizing of civilian populations, represent some of the gravest crimes of our time,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg said in a statement Tuesday. “There is simply no excuse for aligning with or receiving military training from an organization responsible for such suffering. Today’s verdict sends a clear message that those who support this death cult will be found and prosecuted.”