Halima Salman
Introduction
Halima Salman, a 27-year-old Brooklyn-born woman, was convicted on October 27, 2026 of knowingly receiving military training from a terrorist organization after a contentious two-week trial in Brooklyn federal court, and faces up to 10 years in prison at her sentencing . Her case was reported as the first time a woman has faced trial in the United States on charges of joining ISIS . Salman testified in her own defense that her father tricked her family into ISIS-controlled Syria and forced her to marry a militant fighter, and her lawyer called the verdict a “grave miscarriage of justice” .
Background Information
Salman was born in Brooklyn; she testified that her father, an ISIS supporter, moved the family — her mother and eight siblings included — to his home country of Turkey and then tricked them into traveling into ISIS-controlled territory in Syria when she was 17, in 2016 . Shortly after her 18th birthday, she testified, her father arranged her marriage to an ISIS guard named Abu Ali for a $5,000 payment; she described the relationship as horrible and said she could not leave the house without her husband . Her father was killed in a 2018 airstrike. She told jurors she spent two years in ISIS territory and then five years in a war camp run by the Kurdish forces that dismantled the group, before she and nine family members were repatriated to the United States in 2024 and she was arrested at JFK Airport . She had been living with relatives in New Hampshire on $500,000 bond through the trial .
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Convicted. A Brooklyn federal jury found her guilty of knowingly receiving military training from a terrorist organization after a two-week trial; she faces up to 10 years at sentencing on February 2, 2027, and maintains she was forced into the terror group’s territory as a teenager.
Prosecutors argued Salman willingly agreed, during her marriage, to train with the Nusaybah Khatiba, an all-female ISIS battalion . Jurors saw footage of her wielding an AK-47 in her husband’s Syria home — a 20-second video her husband took showing her handling and “drilling” with the weapon — along with a photo of a handwritten document on his phone purporting to authorize her to carry a rifle, and selfies she took with the ISIS flag in the background . Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Shami argued Salman chose an ISIS alias, or kunya, that translated as “foreign fighter,” and told jurors: “The defendant’s father was an ISIS fighter. Her husband was an ISIS fighter. And the defendant herself wanted to be a foreign fighter” . The prosecutor also contended that after surrendering to coalition forces, Salman gave her married name and claimed she had been born in Germany rather than the U.S. .
Salman’s lawyers questioned the authenticity of the training document — recovered from her husband’s phone — noted the government called no witness who saw her train, and cast her as a former Brooklyn Girl Scout with a passion for sewing who was “drummed into” the terror group by her father . “You can come back here in five minutes with a not-guilty verdict… this is a grave miscarriage of justice,” defense lawyer Mia Eisner-Grynberg of the Federal Defenders told the jury in a two-hour closing argument, arguing there was “not a single shred of evidence that there was a training” . The jury deliberated four days, twice signaling it was deadlocked before an Allen charge instructed it to keep trying, then convicted her on the sole count she faced .
Public Reaction and Consequences
Salman, wearing a light purple hijab and pink hoodie, broke down crying as the jury left the room, while her mother, Brandy Salman, wept in the front row; her lawyer quietly cried at the defense table as Salman and her family embraced . “With today’s verdict, Salman is held accountable for joining forces with a terrorist organization,” said Joseph Nocella Jr., the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, adding that his office would “continue to prosecute those who supported its murderous reign” . “Halima has spent her last 10 years surviving ISIS, and the (detention) camps, and this prosecution,” Eisner-Grynberg countered in her closing . Salman and her defense team declined comment after the verdict, and the jurors left without speaking to reporters .
Current Status
Salman remains free on $500,000 bond until her sentencing, set for February 2, 2027 before U.S. District Judge Natasha Merle, who will first weigh a defense motion to throw out the verdict and acquit her for lack of evidence — a motion trial judges rarely grant . The conviction carries a maximum 10-year sentence with no mandatory minimum . Her ex-husband, Abu Ali, is believed to be held in an Iraqi jail, according to a law enforcement source .
Impact on Their Career/Life
As the first woman to stand trial in the U.S. on ISIS-joining charges, Salman’s case set the template for how American courts weigh repatriated ISIS brides’ claims that they were trafficked into the group rather than willing members — and the verdict signals juries can reject that defense even without a witness to the training itself . For Salman personally, a decade of her life spent inside the terror group’s territory and the detention camps that followed now runs into a federal conviction that caps her testimony — that her father sold her into the war zone — against a jury’s finding that she trained willingly .