u will not hear from a single witness that Halima went to a training,  Sherman said in her opening.  The reason the government cannot put her there is because she wasn't there. 

In hearings prior to the trial, Salman's defense team questioned the validity of a photo of Salman's husband showing a handwritten  authorization to grant a weapon  document that's expected to be admitted into evidence.

Salman's father took her family from John F. Kennedy Airport to Syria by way of Moscow and Turkey in 2016, according to the feds, and after her 18th birthday and marriage, she joined an all-female battalion made up of ISIS brides.

Her father was killed in what's been described in court proceedings as either a rocket strike or a bomb blast, and, her lawyers said in 2024, she paid a smuggler to help get her out of Syria, ditched her husband and fled to Iraqi Kurdistan, knowing she'd wind up in a detention camp.

May 9, 2024: Duped teen or willing terrorist

She flew into JFK with her mother and eight siblings in May 2024, as part of a complex repatriation effort hailed by then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken as  the largest single repatriation of U.S. citizens from northeast Syria to date. 

After she landed, though, federal authorities pulled her aside and arrested her.

 Halima Salman was 17 years old when her father took her to ISIS territory in the middle of the night. She was 18 when her father married her off to an ISIS fighter,  Sherman said.  She is not an ISIS fighter or ideologue. She did not commit or threaten any acts of violence. 

Salman's photo with ISIS flags behind her was nothing more than a selfie in her new marital home, taken when she was a teenager who wasn't allowed to go outside without permission. And the video of her with an assault rifle is nothing more than a 20-second snippet showing her briefly walking around with her husband's weapon, nothing more.

She added,  We all, including Halima, agree that ISIS is a terrorist organization that committed horrible atrocities. 

Jurors so far have heard from a U.S. military service member who oversaw the processing of ISIS members and their families surrendering as the caliphate fell to coalition forces in 2019, an FBI agent who interviewed Salman in the al-Roj detention center in Syria in November 2023 and an expert of the rise and fall of ISIS.