Court filings reveal that Allison Fluke-Ekren, a Kansas woman who is convicted of leading an all-female battalion of the Islamic State group, brainwashed young girls and trained them to kill had a long history of monstrous behavior. She allegedly provided material support to the Islamic State group.
Fluke-Ekren pleaded guilty, in June, to terrorism charges after she admitted that she led the Khatiba Nusaybah, an all-female battalion of the Islamic State, wherein 100 women and girls some as young as 10 years of age learned to use automatic weapons and detonate grenades and suicide belts. The mother and teacher-turned ISIS battalion leader also admitted that she discussed planning an attack on an American college.
Last seen in the U.S in January 2011, Fluke-Ekren travelled to Egypt, Libya and emerged in Syria in 2014. The court heard that she had 12 children and five different husbands, several of whom were killed in fighting.
Prosecutors are seeking a maximum 20-year sentence for the 42-year-old when she is sentenced on November 1.
The Sentencing Memo
The First Assistant U.S Attorney Raj Parekh outlined in a sentence memo that Fluke-Ekren carved a path of terror. She sent her own children into unfathomable depths of cruelty by physically, psychologically, emotionally and sexually abusing them. These allegations have been made against her by her own children and parents.
Family have described Fluke-Ekren as the driving force who pushed her second husband into radicalization and convinced him to take her and the kids to Egypt. Terrorist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra ignored and rejected her plans for an all-female battalion, but the Islamic State accepted her idea. Prosecutors said Fluke-Ekren’s parents described her as manipulative and difficult from the beginning. Family members revealed that she would laughingly tell the story of how she tried to drown her brother in an icy lake as children.
The long list of horrific details also highlights torture and sexual abuse. One of Fluke-Ekren’s daughters, who is now an adult, said “My mother would beat my body, leaving my muscles cramping in agony. She would then go to her room and masturbate over the fact that she beat me. I could hear her from the other room.” Fluke-Ekren’s oldest child, a son, also claimed he was molested. He wrote a letter to the court saying “My mother is a monster who enjoys torturing children for sexual pleasure.”
However, it’s unclear whether the abuse allegations will affect the sentencing. But the daughter would be allowed to testify at the sentence hearing as she was a victim of terrorism; Fluke-Ekren had enrolled her in the Khatiba Nusaybah as a child. But Fluke-Ekren has denied many of the abuse allegations. She did acknowledge that her daughter experienced “trauma” in Syria. Defense attorney Joseph King said Fluke-Ekren cannot undo the pain that she caused in taking Witness 1 (daughter) to Syria.
The memo also highlights details of a woman who said she could no longer carry out an attack as she was pregnant. When she gave birth, Fluke-Ekren took the baby and urged the woman to go forward with the attack. Fluke-Ekren sought to increase her status inside terrorist groups by saying that her eldest son was born after she was raped by an American soldier.
