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NYC woman charged with getting ISIS training in Syria says her father forced her to join

John Annese, New York Daily News on

Published in News & Features

NEW YORK — A Brooklyn woman who was repatriated from Syria with her family faces criminal charges for getting AK-47 training from ISIS — though she maintains through her lawyer that she was drummed into joining the terrorist group at age 17 by her father.

Halima Salman, an American citizen, flew into Kennedy Airport with her mother and eight siblings on Tuesday, as part of a complex repatriation effort hailed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken as “the largest single repatriation of U.S. citizens from northeast Syria to date.”

She was arrested after she landed, though, and charged with knowingly receiving military training from a terrorist organization. The charge carries a maximum 10-year sentence.

The rest of her family is staying with her maternal grandmother in New Hampshire.

The FBI and federal prosecutors allege that she and her now-deceased father left the U.S. on a flight from JFK in 2017 and headed to Syria by way of Moscow, then Turkey.

When she turned 18, she got AK-47 training, married an ISIS member, and joined an all-female battalion made up of ISIS brides, the feds allege, presenting an image of a military document they obtained as proof of her willing involvement.

 

“The defendant was not conscripted to join ISIS. Women were not conscripted to join ISIS. Instead, it was something that the defendant sought out as an adult,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Shami said at her Brooklyn Criminal Court arraignment Tuesday.

She was captured by anti-ISIS forces in 2019, and in an FBI interview last year, she told a special agent she never received training and never owned a weapon.

Her lawyer, Samuel Jacobson of the Federal Defenders, argued Tuesday that prosecutors have it all wrong, and that she was a victim of her father’s scheme to join ISIS and not a willing member.

“In many ways, it’s shocking that we’re here today,” he said.

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