American woman led military battalion for the ISIS terrorist group.
United States citizen Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, has been sentenced to two decades behind bars for providing military training for over 100 women and young girls in Syria on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sha (ISIS) and for committing a number of other terrorist acts spanning many years.
According to court documents, “Allison Fluke-Ekren, aka Allison Ekren, aka Umm Mohammed al-Amriki, and aka Umm Mohammed, a former resident of Kansas, traveled overseas and, from in or about September 2011 through in or about May 2019, engaged in terrorist acts in multiple countries, including Syria, Libya and Iraq. Fluke-Ekren ultimately served as the leader and organizer of an ISIS military battalion, known as the Khatiba Nusaybah, where she trained women on the use of automatic firing AK-47 assault rifles, grenades and suicide belts. Over 100 women and young girls, some as young as 10 years old, received military training from Fluke-Ekren in Syria on behalf of ISIS.”
During Fluke-Ekren’s sentencing, the court entered into record letters submitted by the defendant’s adult daughter and adult son, both of whom wrote about being abused when they were minor children. The government also had 2021 recordings between Fluke-Ekren and her daughter where the defendant told her daughter to delete all messages between them. Fluke-Ekren’s daughter indicated in her letter that her mother forced her to marry an ISIS fighter, who then raped her when she was only 13 years old.
In 2008, Fluke-Ekren moved to Egypt with her second husband, a former member of the terrorist organization Ansar al-Sharia. He has since passed away. They lived there for three years, then moved to Benghazi, Libya. In 2012, Fluke-Ekren’s husband retrieved “at least one box of documents and at least one electronic device,” court records show, from the U.S. compound in Benghazi. He brought these to their home. Then, he and Fluke-Ekrenh provided the stolen items to the leadership of Ansar al-Sharia in Benghazi.
In 2012, Fluke-Ekren, her husband and others traveled to Turkey. Shortly afterwards, they moved on to Syria. After six weeks of living there, Fluke-Ekren returned to Turkey while her husband remained in Syria. Her husband eventually became the “emir” (leader) of ISIS snipers in Syria.
In 2014, Fluke-Ekren and others were smuggled back into Syria where Fluke-Ekren told a witness she planned to carry out an attack on the United States. She said she would “go to a shopping mall, park a vehicle full of explosives in the basement or parking garage level of the structure,and detonate the explosives in the vehicle with a cell phone triggering device,” court records show.
That same year, ISIS officials sent a female member to Ablah, Syria, where she resided next door to Fluke-Ekren for approximately 18 days. The witness visited Fluke-Ekren at her residence on many occasions and claimed the defendant discussed a plan to use explosives on the campus of a U.S.-based college in the Midwest.
For the next few years, the defendant continued to plan attacks and work alongside ISIS. Then, in late 2016, the ISIS “Wali” of Raqqa approved the creation of the “Khatiba Nusaybah” – a military battalion of female ISIS members led by Fluke-Ekren.
In 2018, Fluke-Ekren instructed a person living in Syria to send a message to one of her family members indicating she had died so that the U.S. government would not attempt to locate her. Nevertheless, the defendant was transferred in custody to the Eastern District of Virginia on January 28, 2022, and her reign of terror was finally put to an end.
Sources:
American Woman Who Led ISIS Battalion Sentenced to 20 Years
For Daughter of American Militant, Scars of ISIS’ Reign Run Deep
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