American woman who went from local teacher to ISIS leader now faces 20 years in prison
Anish Vij
Featured Image Credit: ALEXANDRIA SHERIFF'S OFFICE / Handout / Alamy Stock Photo
A Kansas woman went from being a local teacher to an ISIS leader and now faces 20 years in prison.
The US citizen plead guilty to conspiring to support a foreign terrorist organisation by leading an all-female military battalion in Syria on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).
Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, travelled from oversees from September 2011 to May 2019 and reportedly engaged in terrorism-related activities in multiple countries, including Syria, Libya and Iraq.
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She served as the leader and organiser of an ISIS military battalion, known as the Khatiba Nusaybah, where she trained over 100 women and girls, some as young as 10-years-old, on the use of automatic firing AK-47 assault rifles, grenades and suicide belts.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Raj Parekh said: "Allison Fluke-Ekren brainwashed young girls and trained them to kill.
"She carved a path of terror, plunging her own children into unfathomable depths of cruelty by physically, psychologically, emotionally and sexually abusing them."
Fluke-Ekren has denied the abuse allegations and called them 'inaccurate, exaggerated, hyperbolic and in many cases completely false', her lawyers have said.
In 2008, she moved to Egypt with her second husband, now-deceased, who was a leader of snipers for ISIS and died in a 2016 US airstrike in Syria, court documents said.
Prosecutors claimed that the defendant's son told them: "The more her children reacted to the pain, the worse the abuse would get."
Her son, who was unnamed in court documents, alleged: "My mother is a monster who enjoys torturing children for sexual pleasure.
"My mother is a monster very skilled in manipulation and controlling her emotions to her advantage."
Her daughter added: "My mother would beat my body, leaving my muscles cramping in agony."
Lawyers representing Fluke-Ekren argued: "She vehemently denies the allegations of abuse and many of the characterisations of her in these paragraphs and points out there were no prior complaints lodged against (her) by her large extended family to any authority."
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) said: "Fluke-Ekren was located outside the United States since on or about Jan. 8, 2011, until she was transferred in custody to the Eastern District of Virginia on Jan. 28."
They added: "She faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors."
Her lawyers argue that the loss of her three husbands and two children caused her post traumatic stress syndrome, which lead her to allegedly quitting ISIS in May 2019.
Fluke-Ekren was sentenced on Tuesday (1 November) and faces 20 years in prison.