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Brooklyn Jury Convicts American 'ISIS Bride' Who Says Her Stepfather Forced Her Into Syria as a Teen

Halima Salman, now 27, faces up to 10 years after a federal jury found she received military-style training from ISIS at 18 — even as her lawyers argued she was a trafficking victim, not a volunteer.

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BY OBSERVER STAFF

The Weekly Observer

OCT 28, 2026 · 3 MIN READ
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Brooklyn Jury Convicts American 'ISIS Bride' Who Says Her Stepfather Forced Her Into Syria as a Teen
A judge's gavel (file photo). Photo by Katrin Bolovtsova / Pexels.

A federal jury in Brooklyn convicted 27-year-old U.S. citizen Halima Salman on Tuesday of receiving military-type training from the Islamic State group, a charge that carries up to 10 years in prison, according to Fox News. Sentencing was set for Feb. 2.

Prosecutors told jurors Salman was trained to use an assault rifle and posed in front of an ISIS flag at her wedding to a fighter, pointing to messages between the two that included a sermon praising jihad and Osama bin Laden, according to Courthouse News' trial coverage. An FBI witness testified Salman told investigators she joined the group in part to "fit in and be cool."

SHE SAYS SHE WAS 18 WHEN HER STEPFATHER TOOK THE FAMILY INTO ISIS TERRITORY

Her defense told a very different story. Salman's lawyers argued she was a victim of her stepfather's decisions, saying he took the family into Syria's war zone when she was a teenager and that she never actually received weapons training herself, according to reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the closing arguments. The defense pushed, unsuccessfully, to have the verdict overturned on grounds the evidence was legally insufficient.

The case is one of a string of prosecutions in recent years of Americans, many of them radicalized as teenagers, who traveled to or were taken into ISIS-held territory during the group's peak years of territorial control. Salman had been free on bond throughout the trial. Her legal team has not said whether it will appeal.

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