A Brooklyn federal jury delivered a historic ISIS bride verdict on Tuesday, October 27, 2026, convicting Halima Salman, 27, of knowingly receiving military-type training from the Islamic State in Syria. The case, tried in the Eastern District of New York, is believed to be the first time a woman accused of joining ISIS has stood trial in a United States federal court, and it ended with a guilty verdict after jurors wrestled for days over a story that pitted the prosecution's account of a willing recruit against the defence's portrait of a teenager trapped by her father and then by her husband.
The verdict came at the end of a trial before U.S. District Judge Natasha C. Merle in Brooklyn federal court. Opening statements were heard on October 13, 2026, and jurors began deliberating on Thursday of the following week. They signalled several times on Monday that they were struggling to reach a unanimous decision, then returned on Tuesday with a guilty verdict on the single charge of knowingly receiving military training from a foreign terrorist organisation.
Salman, who also used the name "Umm Khattab al-Muhajir," broke down in tears in the courtroom after the verdict was read, according to reports from the trial. Her mother, who was in court, embraced her across the railing separating the public gallery from the well of the court. Jurors declined to speak with reporters as they left the courthouse.
The conviction carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. Sentencing is scheduled for February 2, and Salman's lawyers have already asked the judge to acquit her, arguing that the evidence presented at trial was legally insufficient to support the conviction. That post-trial motion will be decided before any sentence is imposed.
Salman had been living with relatives in New Hampshire while free on a $500,000 bond as the case moved toward trial. She was arrested in 2024 at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens after she and nine other members of her family were repatriated to the United States in a government effort to bring home American citizens held in detention centres in Syria.
The story at the heart of the trial began a decade ago. Prosecutors told jurors that Salman's parents travelled with her and her eight siblings out of the United States during September and October 2016, and that the family ultimately entered territory in Syria controlled by ISIS. In late 2016 or early 2017, when Salman was 18 years old, she married an ISIS fighter in Syria.
According to the Justice Department, Salman then voluntarily sought military-type training from the organisation. She received authorisation from ISIS to carry ammunition and an assault rifle, and later received documentation certifying that she had successfully completed the training. A copy of that certificate was recovered from her husband's cellphone after the device was found on the battlefield.
Investigators also recovered photographs from the phone showing Salman with an ISIS flag in the background, and a video depicting her brandishing an AK-47 rifle. Prosecutors said jurors also saw affectionate text messages Salman sent to her husband, which they presented as evidence that she had pledged loyalty to ISIS and willingly took part in its activities.
The training, prosecutors said, was provided through Khatiba Nusaybah, a military battalion composed of female ISIS members. The case was investigated by the FBI's New York Field Office, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Adam Amir and Amanda Shami prosecuted it, with assistance from the Justice Department's National Security Division Counterterrorism Section.
Salman's own account, given in her testimony, was sharply different. She told jurors that her father, an ISIS supporter who was killed in a 2018 airstrike, had moved the family first to his home country of Turkey and then tricked them into travelling into ISIS-controlled territory in Syria. She said she resisted being "married off" at 18 and made repeated efforts to obtain a divorce from her husband, a fighter known as Abu Ali, who is now believed to be in an Iraqi jail.
Salman testified that she spent two years in ISIS territory and then five years in a camp run by Kurdish forces that had dismantled the terror group with help from the United States. Her mother is American, and the family had travelled from the United States to Syria when Salman was young.
The trial turned on a single, difficult question: did a young woman who ended up in ISIS territory choose the group's training, or was she carried into it by people she could not defy? Both sides agreed on much of the timeline. They disagreed profoundly on what it meant.
For the prosecution, the certificate, the rifle video, the flag photograph and the text messages formed a coherent picture of voluntary participation. The certificate in particular was presented as formal proof: ISIS does not, prosecutors argued, issue training documents to people it regards as mere bystanders. The authorisation to carry a weapon, they said, marked Salman as a member of the group's military structure, not a captive in its territory.
For the defence, the same material proved far less. Salman's lawyers questioned the authenticity of the alleged ISIS training certificate and criticised prosecutors for not calling any witness who had actually seen her train. They argued that a document recovered from her husband's phone, a video filmed in her husband's home and photographs taken in a household she could not leave showed, at most, the circumstances of a forced marriage — not a free choice to join a terrorist army.
Defence lawyer Mia Eisner-Grynberg urged jurors in her closing statement on Thursday to reject the prosecution's case outright. "You can come back here in five minutes with a not-guilty verdict… this is a grave miscarriage of justice," she told the jury, casting Salman as a former Brooklyn Girl Scout with a passion for sewing and craft-making who had already "been through hell and back."
The jury's struggle was visible. After beginning deliberations on Thursday, jurors told the court several times on Monday that they were having difficulty reaching unanimity. That difficulty, in a case with only one count, underscored how contested the question of voluntariness had become — and why the defence's post-trial challenge may yet shape the case's final outcome.
Prosecutors welcomed the verdict as an accountability moment. "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. "ISIS ravaged Syria and caused havoc across the globe; our Office will continue to prosecute those who supported its murderous reign."
Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg framed the conviction as a warning to anyone who aligns with the group. "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," Eisenberg said in a statement on 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."
The FBI's New York office also publicised the verdict on Tuesday, noting that the conviction followed an investigation by FBI New York and the Eastern District of New York. The conviction was announced jointly by Eisenberg, Nocella, Jarod Brown, assistant director of the FBI's Counterterrorism Division, and James C. Barnacle, assistant director in charge of the FBI's New York Field Office.
The defence has not accepted the result. Beyond the courtroom tears and the embrace between Salman and her mother, her lawyers' request that the judge overturn the verdict signals that the legal fight is not over. If the judge denies that motion, the case will proceed to sentencing on February 2, where the defence is expected to argue for leniency based on Salman's age when she entered Syria, the coercion she described, and the years she already spent in detention camps.
The verdict matters for several reasons that reach beyond one defendant's fate. First, it breaks new legal ground: no woman accused of joining ISIS had previously been tried in a U.S. federal court, so the case tested how prosecutors prove a training charge built largely on documents and images recovered from a battlefield phone rather than on eyewitness testimony from a training camp.
Second, it sits at the centre of a long-running debate over Americans who travelled to ISIS territory — especially women and teenagers who arrived as family members rather than as fighters. Courts, governments and the public have struggled to draw the line between perpetrator and victim when the same person can plausibly be both: a teenager taken abroad by a parent, married to a fighter, and then photographed holding that fighter's rifle.
Third, the case illustrates the long tail of the ISIS war. The events at issue date to 2016 and 2017, the repatriation to 2024, and the trial to 2026 — a decade-long arc from a Brooklyn childhood to a Syrian war zone, a Kurdish-run camp, a New Hampshire home on bond, and finally a Brooklyn courtroom. Similar cases involving repatriated Americans are likely to follow, and prosecutors will study what persuaded this jury.
Finally, the verdict arrives at a moment when U.S. counterterrorism authorities are keen to show that old ISIS cases are not forgotten. The joint announcement by the Justice Department's national security leadership and the FBI's counterterrorism division was deliberate: it presented the conviction as part of an ongoing effort to prosecute those who supported ISIS rule, even years after the group's territorial defeat.
The immediate next step is the defence's motion for acquittal, which asks Judge Merle to set aside the jury's verdict on the ground that the evidence was legally insufficient. Such motions face a high bar — judges must view the evidence in the light most favourable to the prosecution — but the jury's reported difficulty reaching unanimity, and the defence's challenge to the certificate's authenticity, give the motion more than routine significance.
If the motion fails, sentencing is scheduled for February 2. Salman faces a maximum of 10 years in prison, but the sentence could be considerably lower. Federal judges weigh the sentencing guidelines, the defendant's history, and the circumstances of the offence, and the defence is expected to present Salman's youth at the time, her account of coercion, her years in camps, and her conduct since repatriation as powerful mitigating factors.
Either outcome is likely to be appealed. A defence appeal would revisit the sufficiency of the evidence and any contested trial rulings, while prosecutors would defend a verdict they regard as a landmark. For now, Salman remains free on bond pending the court's decisions, and the case continues to be watched closely by counterterrorism lawyers, human-rights advocates and families of other repatriated Americans.
Halima Salman is a 27-year-old U.S. citizen and former Brooklyn resident who was convicted on October 27, 2026, of receiving military-type training from ISIS in Syria. She was taken to Syria as a teenager in 2016, married an ISIS fighter at 18, spent two years in ISIS territory and five years in a Kurdish-run camp, and was repatriated to the United States in 2024.
She was convicted of knowingly receiving military-type training from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, a designated foreign terrorist organisation. Prosecutors said she voluntarily trained with Khatiba Nusaybah, an all-female ISIS battalion, and was authorised to carry an assault rifle.
It is believed to be the first time a woman accused of joining ISIS has stood trial in a U.S. federal court. The verdict therefore sets an important precedent for how similar cases involving repatriated Americans may be prosecuted.
She faces a maximum of 10 years in federal prison. Sentencing is scheduled for February 2, and the final sentence will depend on the judge's assessment of the guidelines and the mitigating circumstances presented by the defence.
Salman testified that her father forced her into Syria and into marriage, that she resisted the marriage and repeatedly sought a divorce, and that leaving was not an option. "If you try to leave, you die," she told jurors. Her lawyers argued the prosecution's evidence did not prove she voluntarily trained with ISIS.
Related coverage on US News Pulse: a Brooklyn court sentenced a ransomware conspirator to 70 months over hospital cyberattacks, one person died and six were injured in a shooting in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and a 15-year-old was charged as an adult after 11 people were wounded at a Florida A&M homecoming event.
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