Brooklyn Woman Found Guilty of Receiving Islamic State Weapons Training

A Brooklyn woman was found guilty of receiving weapons training from Islamic State forces in Syria on Tuesday.

Halima Salman, a U.S. citizen who is now 27, pleaded no contest to the charge. Prosecutors argued that Salman pledged loyalty to the militant group and actively participated in its military structure. The jury received a video of her holding an assault rifle and a photograph showing her with the group’s flag.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Shami told the jurors that the evidence proved Salman was trained by a violent organization responsible for attacks worldwide. Shami stated, "The evidence shows that the defendant received military training from a violent, brutal, terrorist organization." The defense team presented a different narrative, portraying Salman as a teenager who was trapped in the Syrian civil war by her father and later by a dominant husband.

Salman testified that she was 17 when her father took the family to Turkey in 2017 for what she believed was a visit to relatives. The group crossed into Syria, where masked gunmen surrounded their van. She said she felt frightened and confused during the move. After spending three months in Islamic State housing, she reunited with her family. They moved twice after airstrikes damaged their homes.

Salman described her marriage as coercive. She said her husband told her on their first day together to get up and act like a wife. She testified that she refused the marriage at age 18 and repeatedly sought a divorce. "You try to leave, it is death," she said on the stand. Her father died in 2018 after being injured in an airstrike. She said she spent much of the marriage doing domestic labor for her husband and mother-in-law.

Prosecutors challenged Salman’s claim of limited agency by showing text messages she sent to her husband. They also highlighted that she once sent him a religious song about Osama bin Laden. Salman admitted to carrying the assault rifle but said she was complying with her husband’s request. She described the final year of her marriage as harrowing, with constant bombings forcing the family to live in the streets. She recalled seeing dead bodies everywhere.

The couple fled Syria with other refugees in a truck. Salman told her husband they would separate and said she never saw him again. She was detained in Baghouz, Syria, in 2019 by forces opposed to the Islamic State group. U.S. authorities arrested her when she returned to New York in 2024. Salman burst into tears upon hearing the verdict. A relative in the front row reached across the railing to comfort her. The jury began deliberations on Thursday.

The Islamic State group lost its declared caliphate in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later. Sleeper cells still operate in both countries. The judge left the courtroom to speak with the jurors before setting a date for sentencing.