{"id":377435,"date":"2026-10-20T00:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T00:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/377435\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T00:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T00:26:09","slug":"in-testimony-brooklyn-woman-accused-of-being-trained-by-isis-describes-oppressive-life-in-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/377435\/","title":{"rendered":"In testimony, Brooklyn woman accused of being trained by ISIS describes oppressive life in Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a day of emotional testimony, a Brooklyn woman accused of getting military training<\/a> from ISIS told jurors about how her controlling father spirited her and her family into ISIS-controlled territory in Syria at age 17, and forced her into a subservient arranged marriage at age 18.<\/p>\n

Dressed in a blue hijab, her face uncovered, and a bright pink hoodie, Halima Salman, 27, described a life under the thumb of the oppressive terrorist state as a young, confused woman with no option except to follow ISIS\u2019s strict rules on how women should dress and act.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m nervous and scared,\u201d the Brooklyn native said, quietly, at the start of her testimony when asked by her lawyer, Mia Eisner-Grynberg, how she felt on the stand. \u201cIt\u2019s scary.\u201d<\/p>\n

A day before her arrest in 2024<\/a> on charges she trained with ISIS to use an AK-47, Salman sat down with an FBI agent who gave him happy news after years in detention camps, she testified Monday \u2014 she\u2019d be going home to the U.S. to reunite with her family, and \u201cwas free as a bird.\u201d<\/p>\n

That turned out not to be the case.<\/p>\n

When she landed at JFK Airport to be repatriated<\/a> alongside her family, the feds arrested her on a charge that could land her in prison<\/a> for 10 years.<\/p>\n

Salman spoke about her life after her arrest and release on bond, living with her family in New Hampshire, a sharp contrast from the warzone where she lived in Syria, and the detention centers after ISIS fell.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all green. It\u2019s a really nice place,\u201d she said, talking about how she\u2019s worked toward getting a high school degree and focused on her DIY hobbies, decorating, crocheting, beading, and making baked goods to sell at a gas station and to tourists.<\/p>\n

Salman testified she doesn\u2019t support ISIS, telling the jury, \u201cI believe that ISIS did very scary things which deceive the way Islam is visioned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Federal prosecutors hope to convince a jury that Salman was a willing participant in the terrorist group while living in ISIS-controlled territory in Syria, alleging she got military training, married an ISIS member, and joined an all-female battalion.<\/p>\n

They point to a hand-written document, found on her husband\u2019s cell phone, that purports she received certification for the weapon, a brief cell phone video he made of her picking up his AK-47 in their home before she asked not to be recorded, and a selfie posing in front of an ISIS flag.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Salman testified that she never received training of any sort, and that she couldn\u2019t even leave her house in al-Mayadin, an ISIS-occupied town in Syria, without her husband present. The Syrian Army recaptured the town in October 2017.<\/p>\n

Throughout her testimony, Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Shami repeatedly interrupted with objections, trying to cut short her descriptions of her pre-ISIS childhood and social-life, when she lived in Brooklyn and, later, Egypt, her feelings after her father took her to live in Syria, the rules women had to follow there, and the \u201chorrible\u201d first few days of her arranged marriage.<\/p>\n

Salman described her father as \u201cshort-tempered, aggressive and very stubborn,\u201d and in 2016, while her family was on a trip to Turkey, they piled into a van, expecting to visit relatives.<\/p>\n

She dozed off, she said, and when she woke up, armed ISIS men surrounded the vehicle. \u201cThey were rushing people into the building that the van was in front of,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She and her family were made to stay in a \u201cmadafa\u201d for about three months, a cramped guest house where women and children were held against their will, until her father came back to retrieve them. She was forced to trade her blue hijab for a black one, and a veil to cover her face.<\/p>\n

After her father came back, they stayed in two homes, both of which were bombed, then moved to al-Mayadin, and when she was 18, she was married off.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father, he told me, \u2018I\u2019m gonna bring somebody over\u2026 and that will be the person that you will eventually marry,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Eisner-Grynberg showed a picture of Salman sitting on a silver couch, under an ISIS flag, her face stern on her wedding day. \u201cI was scared. I had a very bad feeling about it,\u201d she said. \u201cI was wondering to myself if this was what was supposed to happen to me. My heart was burning.\u201d<\/p>\n

She went to live with her husband, who she knew as Abu Ali, and his parents, and she was expected to do as they said, she testified. That often meant waking up before everyone every day to bake bread and clean the house, while she was berated and body-shamed, she said. Her father died in a bomb blast, she said.<\/p>\n

She had a phone, but no cell service, and sent her husband pictures with a Bluetooth app.<\/p>\n

She explained the picture with the flag as a \u201cpretty\u201d photo of herself\u00a0she took to keep him happy. \u201cIf I had a bad day, I\u2019d try to please him so I could give myself a decent day,\u201d she said. \u201cIt didn\u2019t mean anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Salman said she asked for a divorce three times, but wasn\u2019t able to split with him until their house was destroyed in the fighting, and they took a long journey to a spot where she ultimately surrendered to coalition forces in 2019.<\/p>\n

In her cross-examination, Shami pressed Salman on the inconsistencies in her paperwork after her surrender, accusing her of still using her married name and lying about being an American while in detention.<\/p>\n

Shami pressed Salman on why she hadn\u2019t asked to be repatriated during her roughly five years in Syrian Defense Force-run detention camps, and she countered she had, \u201cprobably a hundred times, whoever I could speak to.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the prosecutor asked why she listed Germany as her country of birth, she testified that she had done no such thing, countering that the SDF members who collected her info were young, and \u201ca lot of them are also illiterate.\u201d<\/p>\n

On re-direct, Salman said the SDF might have collected bad information because her mother-in-law did all the talking when she surrendered, but there, the prosecutor scored a point, asking at the end of her testimony, \u201cAre you aware that your mother-in-law was arrested two months earlier?\u201d<\/p>\n

The trial continues Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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