US lady who led all-female IS battalion sentenced to 20 years in prison

A Kansas, USA mother, Allison Fluke-Ekren, who led an all-female battalion of the Islamic State group (IS), has been sentenced to 20 years in prison on Tuesday.

The 42-year-old Fluke-Ekren, had pleaded guilty in June to expressing interest in carrying out terrorist attacks in the United States in support of ISIS on six separate occasions between 2014 and 2017, according to court documents which were unsealed in February.

In court documents, the US Justice Department said ISIS trained over 100 women and young girls, some just 10 years old, on how to use automatic weapons, grenades and suicide belts.

Fluke-Ekren was found guilty of committing terrorist acts in Iraq, Syria and Libya over an eight-year period.

Ahead of the sentencing, prosecutors had stated that a maximum allowable sentence by law would not be enough to punish her but should be imposed regardless.

Her defence team had sought an unspecified shorter sentence, arguing that she was traumatised by her experiences in war-torn Syria.

The court heard how Fluke-Ekren, a former teacher, grew up in the small community of Overbrook in Kansas, and became a fanatic militant who rose through the ranks of IS.

Read also:66-yr-old US woman jailed 10 years for sexually abusing 12-yr-old boy

“While many other women joined IS – including some who fought or performed other functions on the group’s behalf – Fluke-Ekren is a rare case of a woman being elevated to a leadership position in the traditionally male-dominated group,” the court heard.

According to the Department of Justice, “she later moved to the Middle East with her second husband – a now-deceased member of the Libyan militant group Ansar Al-Sharia and IS – in the early 2000s, during which time she still visited Kansas occasionally.”

“In or around 2012, she was smuggled into Syria and became an active member of IS, marrying several other militants after her husband was killed in battle.

“Two of her subsequent husbands, including a Bangladeshi drone specialist, were also killed fighting for the group.

“Around four years later, she became a leader and organiser of Khatiba Nusayba, an all-female IS battalion set up in the group’s de-facto capital of Raqqa, Syria. Her primary duty there was providing military training to the women, including in the use of AK-47s, grenades and suicide belts.”

While sentencing her, First Assistant US Attorney Raj Parekh wrote that 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,” Parekh said.

Two of Fluke-Ekren’s 12 children also alleged in letters to the court that she sexually abused them, an accusation her lawyers say she “vehemently denies.”

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