NEW YORK (AP) — A New York woman whose father took her to Syria as a teenager and arranged her marriage to an Islamic State fighter was convicted Tuesday of receiving weapons training from the militant group.
Prosecutors said Halima Salman, a U.S. citizen, pledged loyalty to the extremist group and willingly participated in its activities. Jurors were shown a video of her holding an assault rifle, a photo of her with the group's flag, and loving text messages she sent her husband.
Brooklyn-based U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said in a statement that the verdict held Salman “accountable for joining forces with a terrorist organization.”
The defense sought to portray Salman, now 27, as a teenager who was unwittingly trapped in Syria's civil war, first by her father and later by an extremist husband whose orders she had to follow.
“You try to leave, it is death,” Salman testified. She said she refused to be “married off” at age 18 and repeatedly tried to get a divorce.
Salman, her mother and even her defense attorneys wept after hearing the verdict. Still in tears, Salman and her mother later hugged each other across the railing between the audience and the courtroom well.
Jurors, who began deliberating Thursday, had repeatedly indicated Monday that they were struggling to reach a unanimous decision. The members declined to comment as they left court after the verdict.
Salman's lawyers also declined to comment. They are asking the judge to set aside the verdict and acquit her, as federal law allows if a judge finds the evidence presented at a trial doesn't legally support a conviction. Such requests are often made but rarely granted.
Salman’s conviction carries the potential for up to 10 years in prison. Sentencing currently is set for Feb. 2.
The Islamic State group, which the U.S. government designates as a terror group, seized large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014 and declared the territory to be a caliphate. Despite its defeat in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, the group still has sleeper cells that carry out deadly attacks in both countries.
Born in Brooklyn, Salman was 17 when her father took the family on what she thought was a trip to visit relatives in Turkey in 2017. Instead, the van crossed into Syria, where masked gunmen surrounded them. Salman said she was frightened and confused, and had no idea where her father was taking them.
“I do blame my father for a lot of things that happened,” she testified.
She said she spent three months in housing run by the Islamic State group before reuniting with her family. They moved twice because their homes were hit by airstrikes.
On the first day of her marriage, Salman recalled, her husband told her: “Get up, stupid wife, it’s time for you to be a wife.”
She spent much of the marriage doing domestic labor for her husband and mother-in-law. Her father died after being injured in an airstrike in 2018.
Prosecutors insisted Salman was dishonest and had more agency in Syria than she claimed. They got her to concede during cross-examination that she once sent a religious song about Osama bin Laden to her husband. Prosecutors also disputed Salman’s account of a poor marriage, citing two loving text messages she sent to her husband.
“The evidence shows that the defendant received military training from a violent, brutal, terrorist organization — an organization that is responsible for attacks across the world,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Shami told the jury in a closing argument last week.
Salman's husband took a video of her holding an assault rifle, which prosecutors said she had been trained to use. When she testified, Salman said she was only complying with her husband’s request to carry the rifle.
She recalled that her last year of marriage was particularly harrowing, as constant bombings sometimes forced them to live in the streets, where she recalled seeing “dead bodies everywhere.”
The couple eventually fled with other refugees in a truck, where she told her husband they were going to separate, and Salman testified that she never saw him again.
She was detained in Baghouz, Syria, in 2019 by forces opposed to the Islamic State group. She was arrested by U.S. authorities when she returned to New York in 2024.
Halima Salman shields her face as she leaves federal court in the Brooklyn borough of New York on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026.” (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A senior State Department official said Tuesday that Flávio Bolsonaro and his family will be granted U.S. visas after his weekend loss to incumbent Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a hotly contested race that bucked a trend of conservative electoral results in Latin America.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to visa privacy laws, said “the State Department will issue visas to Flávio Bolsonaro and his family and allow them entry into the United States.”
Bolsonaro, who had President Donald Trump’s tacit support, had been under investigation for corruption, money laundering and tax evasion in Brazil and had been ordered to surrender his passport.
The State Department official did not say if Bolsonaro had already left Brazil or if he and his family were en route to the U.S.
A spokesperson for Bolsonaro did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday; his campaign manager Rogério Marinho also refused to comment.
Bolsonaro’s brother, Eduardo Bolsonaro, who lives in Texas, had publicly encouraged him to leave Brazil if he lost the election.
Bolsonaro has touted his relationship with Trump and visited the White House in May. The family connections go deeper: Brother Eduardo Bolsonaro was convicted in absentia in June of illegally lobbying the Trump administration and sentenced to four years in prison. A warrant was recently issued for his arrest.
Trump did not offer a full-throated endorsement of Bolsonaro in the runoff against Lula, as he has with some other right-of-center candidates in Latin America. But he suggested on Monday, without providing evidence, that Brazil’s election was “rigged.”
Bolsonaro's decision to leave Brazil came as a deadline for him to surrender his regular and diplomatic passports expired at noon Tuesday. It remained unclear whether he had complied.
Bolsonaro was served with the order to surrender his passports Monday, a day after his stunning loss. Bolsonaro said he received it outside the home where his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, is serving a 27-year sentence under house arrest for attempting a coup following his 2022 election loss to Lula. After that defeat, Jair Bolsonaro fled Brazil for Florida. He returned three months later.
The sealed Supreme Court order, viewed by The Associated Press, was issued Sunday. Bolsonaro has refused to concede defeat and has made unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud.
Bolsonaro initially asked for the election results to be annulled after an evening of chaos at some polling places that prompted authorities to extend voting by two hours.
On Monday, he urged the electoral court to investigate alleged election fraud and nullify Lula's and Vice President Geraldo Alckmin's candidacies, which the electoral court has never done before.
“I never thought about leaving the country,” Bolsonaro said in a video published on his social media channels. "I will hand over my passports and I will defend myself from this aberration. It is a clear attempt to intimidate me. But I will not be silenced."
To overturn the result, Bolsonaro would have to present evidence of fraud affecting Lula's 4.4 million-vote margin and convince the eight-member electoral court before the results are certified on Dec. 18.
Lula, who turned 81 on Tuesday, received more than 64 million votes, compared with fewer than 60 million for Bolsonaro, a margin of nearly 4%.
Bolsonaro said in a video posted Monday on his social media channels that he had no plans to leave Brazil and instead was attempting to organize opposition among his congressional colleagues to the election results. His eight-year term as a senator expires Jan. 31, 2027, which will also cause him to lose special jurisdiction at the country's Supreme Court.
Bolsonaro is under investigation by Brazil's Supreme Court for alleged corruption, money laundering and tax evasion in two cases. In one, he's accused of using a sports betting company to launder fraudulent deductions from government pensions paid to senior citizens. In the other, he is accused of accepting millions of dollars from a disgraced banker.
He has denied any wrongdoing in both cases, and has claimed Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is heading one of the investigations, is a Lula ally. Prosecutors suspect the funds from the banker were used to pay his brother, Eduardo Bolsonaro’s, expenses and to promote Flávio Bolsonaro’s political agenda with the Trump administration, documents show.
Mauricio Marcon, a lawmaker of Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party, also questioned de Moraes’ objectivity on Tuesday. “Seven minutes after the election, Alexandre de Moraes ordered his passports to be seized,” Marcon said. Bolsonaro "will represent us in a free country. He will continue to be our leader."
Brazilians had earlier taken to social media to ask where Bolsonaro was. Reporters gathered outside his home in the capital, Brasilia, but he did not appear.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Security of Argentina denied reports the Brazilian senator had entered the country. Brazilian media outlets reported that many Bolsonaro allies had been unable to reach him.
Paulo Figueiredo, a close ally of Bolsonaro's who lives in the United States, was asked about the senator's whereabouts and did not answer directly.
“At this moment — following months of intense work that were unfairly thwarted — I have no desire to speak with the press. I kindly ask that you do not persist. Should I have a statement to make on any matter, I will reach out,” Figueiredo said.
Savarese reported from Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
Opposition presidential candidate Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro arrives at his election night event after the presidential runoff in Brasilia, Brazil, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026.(AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
