Published 6 hours ago • loading... • Updated 4 hours ago
Jury Weighs Fate of US Woman Who Says Father Forced Her Into Syria’s War Zone when She Was a Teen
Jurors heard conflicting accounts of whether Salman joined ISIS voluntarily or was coerced as a teenager after her father took her into Syria.
On Thursday, a Brooklyn jury began deliberations in the trial of Halima Salman, accused of receiving military training from the Islamic State group during her time in Syria.
Defense attorney Mia Eisner-Grynberg stated that Salman was 17 when her father drove her from Turkey into Syria without explanation, where gunmen surrounded them and she remained locked in a room for three months.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Shami portrayed the 27-year-old defendant as manipulative, citing testimony that Salman pledged loyalty to the Islamic State and presented photos of her with the group's flag and an assault rifle.
Dismissing the case as "optics, inference and speculation," Eisner-Grynberg insisted prosecutors failed to find witnesses of weapons training and noted a key document lacked the Islamic State official stamp.
Salman, arrested in May 2024 at Kennedy International Airport upon returning to the United States, remained free on bail throughout the two-week trial and now faces the jury's decision on her involvement in Syria from 2017 to 2019.