Arab News | American woman convicted of getting military training from Daesh group

NEW YORK: An American woman who joined the Daesh group before being caught by anti-Daesh forces in Syria was found guilty on Tuesday of receiving military training from the jihadists.

Halima Salman, 27, was one of hundreds of foreign women who went or were taken to the territory controlled by the Daesh, and who then married jihadist fighters before being captured and detained pending their repatriation.

The fate of these women and their children has proven a sticking point for the Western countries from where some originated, with many trapped or stripped of their citizenship by their former homelands.

Salman’s mother is an American, and her family traveled from the United States to Syria when she was young.

Salman was convicted of receiving military-type training from Daesh when she was 18, prosecutors said in a statement, a crime that could carry 10 years of imprisonment. She will be sentenced at a later date.

At 17, she traveled to an Daesh-controlled area of Syria in late 2016 or early 2017, via Russia and Turkiye.

“While in Syria, Salman was trained to use an assault rifle and received ammunition from an Daesh military battalion when she was 18,” prosecutors had alleged, using another acronym for the group.

While there, she married German-Afghan Daesh fighter Abu Ali, according to court documents.

In early 2019, she was taken into custody by Syrian forces opposed to Daesh and was placed in a relocation camp until 2024, when Salman returned to the US and was arrested.

“With today’s verdict, Salman is held accountable for joining forces with a terrorist organization,” said United States Attorney Anthony Nocella.

“ISIS ravaged Syria and caused havoc across the globe; our office will continue to prosecute those who supported its murderous reign.”

Salman’s defense attorney had claimed she was “the victim of her (mother’s husband) bringing her as a child to Daesh territory in Syria.”

The attorney added that Salman was unaware of the man’s pro-Daesh beliefs.

A US-led coalition was deployed to Iraq and Syria in 2014 to fight the Daesh group, which had seized large swathes of territory, committed massacres, and forced thousands of women and children into slavery.

Kurdish forces still hold around 2,200 foreign relatives of suspected Daesh fighters in a northeastern Syria camp, an official there told AFP earlier this month.

The Program on Extremism has identified 83 American adults who traveled to Syria or Iraq since 2011 and were affiliated with jihadist groups there.