Baba
Trained woman Islamic terrorist, 10 years jail
~ The below is courtesy of The New York Times ~
A woman who was taken to Syria as a teenager was convicted on Tuesday of charges that she trained with the Islamic State terror group.
The woman, Halima Salman, an American citizen from Brooklyn who was brought to ISIS-controlled territory by her father when she was 17, was found guilty by a federal jury after a weeklong trial and three days of deliberation.
Ms. Salman, who faces up to 10 years in prison at sentencing, is believed to be the first woman accused of being an ISIS member to stand trial in federal court. She was brought back to the United States with her family in May 2024 as part of a repatriation effort by the State Department, which, under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., had been pushing U.S. allies to bring back Americans who had joined ISIS.
When her family left the plane at Kennedy Airport in New York, Ms. Salman was promptly arrested by F.B.I. agents. She was later indicted on one count of receiving military training from a foreign terrorist organization.
During the trial, prosecutors presented an image of an ISIS document written in Arabic, one that allowed her to possess a Kalashnikov rifle, along with two magazines and 150 bullets. The document, which prosecutors said showed Ms. Salman had received weapons training, was recovered from the phone of her husband, an ISIS fighter originally from Germany, according to prosecutors.
They also showed jurors images of Ms. Salman posing in front of the ISIS flag, as well as a video of her holding and pointing an assault rifle.
Soon after arriving in Syria, prosecutors said, Ms. Salman adopted the name Umm al-Khattab al-Muhajir. The name “al-Muhajir,” which translates to “immigrant” in Arabic, was often chosen by fighters from outside Iraq and Syria.
Ms. Salman’s father, who served as a guard for ISIS, died in a rocket attack in 2018, prosecutors said. As the group lost its territory in 2019, Ms. Salman, her mother and her siblings were captured by coalition forces opposing ISIS.
Eighty-three American adults, including 14 women, have traveled to Syria or Iraq to join terrorist groups in the region since 2011, according to a February 2022 report from the George Washington University Program on Extremism. An additional 12 to 30 U.S. minors traveled to the region during that time, the report estimated.
~ The above is courtesy of The New York Times ~