A Kansas woman who led an Islamic State battalion has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after her children shared shocking victim-impact statements about their experiences.
Allison Fluke-Ekren The Justice Department said in the sentencing announcement that it had provided military training to more than 100 women and girls in Syria and committed many other acts of terrorism.
The 42-year-old man, also known as Umm Mohammed al-Amriki, was sentenced Tuesday in the Eastern District of Virginia. The former Kansas resident left the United States in September 2011 and went to work to “engage in terrorist activities in many countries,” including Syria, Libya and Iraq, the Justice Department said.
According to the Justice Department, she “ultimately led and organized an IS military battalion, known as Khatiba Nusaybah, where she trained women in the use of automatic-fire AK-47 assault rifles, grenades and suicide belts”.
In an emotional sentencing hearing, two of Fluke-Ekren’s children wrote letters detailing their sexual abuse by Fluke-Ekren, beginning in Kansas and continuing abroad when they were teenagers. adult.
“My mother would beat my body, causing my muscles to spasm with pain. [She] would then go to her room and masturbate because of the fact that she hit me. I could hear her from the other room,” the daughter wrote.
In her letter, her son wrote: “My mother is a monster who loves to torture children for sexual gratification.”
Additionally, Fluke-Ekren’s daughter released a victim impact statement on Tuesday detailing “severe” abuse inflicted on her as a minor in Syria. , including forcing her to marry an ISIS fighter who then raped her when she was 13 years old.
Fluke-Ekren’s son also released a statement describing his mother’s efforts to convince him to leave the United States for Syria.
“You made me give up everything just so you could go on your next adventure,” he quotes one of his messages to his mother, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Both the son and daughter begged the court to prevent their mother from ever contacting them again. That request was approved by the judge.
Fluke-Ekren has denied the abuse allegations, and while she’s “shocked and saddened by these allegations,” she “admits Witness-1 [her daughter] experienced trauma in Syria,” wrote defense attorney Joseph King before.
“She forged a path of horror, plunging her children into the unfathomable depths of cruelty by physically, psychologically, emotionally, and sexually abusing them,” said Second Assistant. United States Attorney Raj Parekh speak Last week, in a sentencing memo revealing allegations that Fluke-Ekren’s children and parents had brought against her.
After a stint in Libya in 2011, where she and her second husband stole documents from a US compound in Benghazi and delivered them to the leader of Ansar al-Sharia, the couple moved to Turkey and then to Syria, where Fluke-Ekren’s. the second husband rose through the ranks of ISIS and eventually became the “emir” (leader) of the IS snipers in Syria.
In 2014, Fluke-Ekren boasted of her desire to launch an attack on the United States.” Fluke-Ekren explained that she might go to a shopping mall in the United States, park a car full of explosives in the basement or garage of the structure, and detonate explosives in the vehicle with a cell phone trigger,” the Justice Department said.
“Fluke-Ekren added that she considers any attack that fails to kill a large number of instances as a waste of resources. Fluke-Ekren will hear about external attacks taking place in countries outside of the US and will comment that she wishes the attack happened on US soil. She also discussed the possibility of bombing the campus of a US college in the Midwest.
In 2016, after moving to Mosul, Iraq, Fluke-Ekren was recruited by “Wali”, the mayor of Raqqa appointed by ISIS, to establish the Women’s Center. That same year, “Khatiba Nusaybah” was born — a military battalion made up of only female ISIS members. Fluke-Ekren’s primary goal as the leader and organizer of the Khatiba Nusaybah battalion is to teach female ISIS members how to defend themselves against the enemies of ISIS, including helping male fighters defend Raqqa due to ISIS control.
Training included the use of weapons, including automatic-fire AK-47 assault rifles, grenades, and explosives-laden suicide belts, but the battalion also provided some members with physical training instruction. Substances include martial arts, medical training, VBIED driving courses, ISIS religion classes and how to pack and prepare a “go bag” with rifles and other military supplies.
