ISIS Bride Trial in Full Swing As Prosecution Rests Its Case

The prosecution on Monday rested its case against Halimi Salman, an American citizen who is on trial for joining the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group.

Salman’s story garnered national attention after her arrest as she is the first female American citizen to join up with the radical Islamic terrorist group. However, her defense insists there is more to the story, according to Courthouse News:

As the government rested its case on Monday morning, defense attorneys moved for Salman’s acquittal, arguing in part that the case should be tossed because prosecutors did not call any witnesses who placed Salman in any trainings, or even testified that any such training took place in the area where Salman lived.

The key piece of evidence in the government’s case is a handwritten document purportedly issued by IS authorizing her to receive an AK-47 assault rifle, two magazines and 150 bullets. Investigators found a photo of the handwritten document on the phone of Abu Ali, Salman’s ex-husband, an IS fighter to whom she was married shortly after turning 18 years old. Jurors also saw selfies Salman took in her home with Ali, in front of an IS flag, and a video of Salman handling an assault rifle in the home while Ali takes a video.

Salman told jurors it was her father who insisted she marry Ali just a few days after introducing the two. She said she was brought to an area that looked like a garage and her father and Ali made agreements memorialized in a marriage license listing a $5,000 marriage payment, “payable when able.”

Eisner-Grynberg showed Salman a photograph of herself at her marriage ceremony and asked Salman what she was feeling at the time.

“I was scared. I had a very bad feeling about it. I was wondering if this was what was supposed to happen to me. My heart was burning,” Salman said.

On cross-examination, Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Shami sought to portray Salman as an IS supporter who hid that she was American while detained in camps for years following IS’s surrender, until Salman’s mother applied for repatriation in 2023.

Halima Salman (27), is the first woman accused of being a member of #ISIS to go on trial in U.S. federal court – The #Brooklyn-born American woman is facing federal charges of receiving military training from ISIS in #Syria. – In late 2016/early 2017, when she was 17, her father took her, her mother, and 8 siblings from the U.S. (via Moscow and Turkey) into ISIS-controlled parts of Syria. – After she turned 18, she married Mati’allah Bin Abdallah Nurzad, an ISIS fighter of Afghan-German origin and used the kunya Umm al-Khattab al-Muhajir. – She is alleged to have joined the Nusaybah Katiba (also called Khatiba Nusaybah), an all-female ISIS unit primarily made up of wives of fighters, and to have received training on an AK-47. – Evidence cited by prosecutors includes photos of her posing with an ISIS flag (including on her wedding day), short video of her holding/aiming/walking with an assault rifle, and a document from the unit stating she completed training and was authorized to receive ammunition for an AK-47 already in her possession. – She was captured by anti-ISIS forces around Baghouz in early 2019, spent years in Syrian detention camps (including al-Roj), and was repatriated in May 2024. She was arrested upon landing at JFK. – Other American women linked to ISIS have faced charges and pleaded guilty, but Salman’s case is reported as the first to go to a full federal trial. – Samantha Elhassani (#Indiana) was sentenced in November 2020 to 6½ years in prison after pleading guilty to financing terrorism for smuggling more than $30,000 in cash and gold to help her husband and brother-in-law join ISIS, then traveling with her children to live in ISIS-controlled Syria until her 2018 repatriation – Allison Fluke-Ekren (#Kansas) was sentenced in November 2022 to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to providing material support to ISIS for leading the all-female Khatiba Nusaybah battalion in Syria and training over 100 women and girls on weapons and explosives. – If convicted, Halima Salman faces a maximum of 10 years in federal prison. https://t.co/JjxBYEsdaT

— Adrian Shtuni (@Shtuni) October 14, 2026

Salman, 27, was 17 when her father took her, her mother, and eight siblings from the United States through Russia and Turkey into ISIS-controlled territory in Syria in late 2016. 

After she turned 18, she married a German-Afghan ISIS fighter and was charged with knowingly receiving military-type training from the group’s all-female Nusaybah Katiba unit, which included instruction on an AK-47, with prosecutors citing photographs of her with an ISIS flag, a short video of her holding an assault rifle, and a document authorizing her to possess the weapon. 

Salman was captured by anti-ISIS forces in Baghouz in 2019 and spent several years in a Syrian detention camp. She was later arrested at JFK Airport in May 2024 after she was repatriated with her family. Then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken described it as the largest single repatriation of Americans from northeast Syria.

The defendant faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted, while her defense maintains she was a victim of her father’s actions, was forced into an arranged marriage, and never willingly trained with or supported ISIS, having told FBI agents that she “really wasn’t participating in anything, and that she really was just trying to fit in and be cool.”

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