An American who converted to Islam and joined the Islamic State in Syria and led an all-female military battalion was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a US court on Tuesday. Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, who grew up on a farm in Kansas, was sentenced to the maximum possible sentence by US District Judge Leonie Brinkema after pleading guilty to terrorism charges in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. claims she was manipulated by her second husband, who is of Turkish descent, in.
There is no doubt that he provided material support to a terrorist organization," the judge said. For more than eight years, Fluke-Ekren has been involved in a "terrorist killing spree" in war zones in Libya, Iraq and Syria, including training other women and girls to carry out attacks for the Islamic State, said federal prosecutor Raj Parekh.
Fluke-Ekren adopted the combat name Umm Mohammed al-Amriki and "in effect became the empress of ISIS," Parekh said. He held a high position in the ranks of the now-defunct Islamic caliphate. His verdict included dramatic comments made to the judge by one of his daughters. his mother was motivated by a "greed for control and power" in.
"I want people to see what kind of person he was," said his daughter. "She left me with my rapist in Raqqa," she said, referring to her husband and an IS fighter. At one point, prosecutors played the audio. Tracings of phone conversations between Fluke-Ekren and her daughter, captured by the FBI. His daughter, who was in the visitors' gallery, covered her fingers while the tapes played loudly. Her son Gabriel, who, like his sister, waived anonymity, said in a written statement to the court that his mother was a "monster with no love for her children, no apology for her actions."
"She has the blood, pain and suffering of all her children on her hands," he said. Fluke-Ekren, wearing a dark green prison jacket and black scarf, addressed the court "deeply sorry" and asked the judge for a "compassionate sentence" of just two years in prison. "I deeply regret my decisions," he told the judge. "I apologize to anyone who has been hurt by my actions."
Born Allison Brooks and raised in a "loving and stable home" in Overbrook, Kansas, Fluke-Ekren was considered a "gifted" student, the US attorney said. "There is nothing in his background that could explain his behavior," Parekh said. After leaving her first husband, with whom she had two children, Fluke-Ekren attended the University of Kansas, where she married a fellow student named Volkan Ekren and became a Muslim. He later received a teaching certificate from a university in Indiana. They had 5,children together and adopted one more after the boy's parents were killed in suicide bombers in Syria.
In 2008 the family moved to Egypt and in 2011 to Libya where, according to the US Attorney, “Fluke-Ekren's dogged quest for positions of power and influence began to educate young women in extremist ideology and they were in Benghazi , Libya , in September 2012, when the Islamist militant group Ansar al-Sharia attacked the US mission and CIA annex there, killing the US ambassador and three others and summarizing the contents of stolen US government documents in , the family left Libya Late 2012 or early 2013 and moved between Iraq, Turkey and Syria, became deeply involved with ISIS and lived for a time in the group's stronghold in Mosul. Fluke-Ekren's second husband, the leader of an Islamic State sniper unit, was killed in 2015.
She remarried three more times, including to a Bangladesh Islamic State drone expert and an Islamic State military leader in charge of defending Raqqa Islamic State in 2017, and had four more children. In 2017, Fluke-Ekren became the leader of an all-female Islamic State battalion called "Khatiba Nusaybah," which U.S. Attorneys say has provided military training to more than 100 women and girls. "During the training sessions, Fluke-Ekren taught the women and girls how to use AK-47 assault rifles, grenades and explosive belts," said Parekh."I have never shot or fired a bullet.
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