Ex-Kansas teacher who led all-female ISIS battalion sentenced to 20 years

By Darryl Coote



Allison Fluke-Ekren was sentenced Tuesday to 20 years' imprisonment. File Photo courtesy of Alexandria Sheriff's Office
Nov. 2 (UPI) -- A federal judge has sentenced a former Kansas school teacher who led an all-female Islamic State battalion to 20 years in prison.
The Justice Department said in a statement that U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema handed down the sentence Tuesday in a federal Alexandria, Va., courtroom after Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, pleaded guilty in June to providing material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization.

The former Kansas resident left the United States more than a decade ago for the Middle East to aid terrorist organizations, including the Islamic State for which she led her own battalion comprised of more than 100 women and girls, some as young as 10 years old.
Fluke-Ekren admitted to training the Khatiba Nusaybah in the use of AK-47s, grenades and suicide vests.

Court documents filed early this year explained that Fluke-Ekren's main goal as the leader of the Khatiba Nusaybah was to train the women and girls in "how to defend themselves against ISIS' enemies."
The women and girls received martial arts and medical training and participated in vehicle-borne improvised explosive device driving courses, religious classes and instruction on preparing a so-called go bag with rifles and other military supplies.
"According to eyewitness accounts, some of these classes were taught by Fluke-Ekren. One witness observed that the leaders of ISIS and the other members of the military battalion were proud to have an American instructor," the court document states.

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Prosecutors added that a witness said they had seen one of Fluke-Ekren's children, approximately 5 or 6 years old at the time, holding a machine gun at their Syrian residence.
During sentencing on Tuesday, the court heard statements from her two adult children recounting how they were abused by their mother, the Justice Department said.
According to the federal prosecutors, her adult children said the abuse began in Kansas but continued overseas.
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Her now-adult daughter recounted that when they were in Syria she was coerced by her mother to marry an ISIS fighter who raped her when she was only 13 years old.

"My mother is a monster who enjoys torturing children for sexual pleasure," her unidentified adult son wrote in court documents that were filed last week by federal prosecutors, ABC News reported.
"My mother is a monster very skilled in manipulation and controlling her emotions to her advantage," he wrote. "My mother is a monster without love for her children, without an excuse for her actions."
Court documents state that one witness who interacted with Fluke-Ekren in Syria described her radicalization as "off the charts."
Her conduct on behalf of ISIS also included planning and recruiting operatives for a potential attack on an unidentified U.S. college campus, prosecutors said.
She also espoused a desire to conduct other attacks within the United States.
Fluke-Ekren told a witness that "she could go to a shopping mall in the United States, park a vehicle full of explosives in the basement or parking garage level of the structure and detonate the explosives" with the use of a cell phone, the court document states.
"Fluke-Ekren considered any attack that did not kill a large number of individuals to be a waste of resources," the document said, adding that she "would hear about external attacks taking place in countries outside the Untied States and would comment that she wished the attack had occurred on the United States soil instead."

Before the court on Tuesday, Fluke-Ekren said she "regrets her choices," CBS News reported.
Fluke-Ekren left for the Middle East with her second husband, a now-deceased former member of the Ansar al-Sharia terrorist organization, in 2008 with prosecutors stating her terrorism career lasted from September 2011 to at least May 2019 when she was charged by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Ex-Kansas teacher who led all-female ISIS battalion sentenced to 20 years - UPI.com