‘Bombs everywhere’: Defendant accused of training with Islamic State takes stand

Defense attorneys argued prosecutors didn't call any witnesses who placed Halima Salman in any Islamic State trainings in Syria when she was a teenager.BROOKLYN (CN) — Halima Salman didn’t know her father had decided to move her family into Islamic State territory until she awoke in a van surrounded by armed men.Their faces covered, the men said, “Hurry,” speaking Arabic, Salman told jurors on Monday as she testified in her own defense.Prosecutors accuse Salman of training with Nusaybah Katiba, an all-female battalion primarily composed of IS fighters’ wives. Trial began last week, more than two years after Salman’s family was repatriated from northeast Syria.Salman is the second-oldest of nine children. She was born in Brooklyn in 1999, to an American mother and a Turkish father, and remembers family barbecues in Prospect Park, trips to the zoo and museum visits. With her father calling the shots, the family moved throughout her later childhood and teenage years between Egypt, Turkey and the U.S.In September 2016, Salman’s father moved the family from Brooklyn to Turkey one last time — and after a few months with family, brought Salman, her mother and her siblings on what Salman believed was a normal family trip. In fact, he’d taken them to IS-controlled territory in Syria, where they would spend the next two years, followed by more than five years in detention camps as IS fighters surrendered in droves to the U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.A soft-spoken Salman, now 27, wore a powder blue hijab and light pink zipped sweatshirt as she told the court about her transition to a life of tight control.“It was very hard. We couldn’t choose what we eat, we couldn’t leave when we want, you don’t have your own space,” she said of her family’s three-month stay in a “madafa,” a guest house where they waited for her father to collect them before moving to a series of homes in IS territory.She could not roam freely, she told her attorney, Mia Eisner-Grynberg of the Federal Defenders of New York, on direct examination.“There were bombs everywhere,” Salman said.Eisner-Grynberg asked why her family didn’t leave.“You can’t once you’re there," Salman said. “If you want to leave, it’s death.”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 area where Salman lived.The key piece of evidence in 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.Salman refuted the idea that she didn’t try to get home, saying she asked to be repatriated “probably 100 times.”Shami also asked Salman if she blamed her father for the events that led to her criminal case — where, if convicted, Salman faces up to 10 years in prison. On that point Salman did not disagree.“I do blame my father for a lot of things he did to the family, yes,” she said.Trial will continue Tuesday in the Eastern District of New York.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads