By Allan Lengel
A U.S. citizen was sentenced to 20 years in prison Tuesday in Virginia for organizing and leading an all-female military battalion in Syria on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).
The government alleges that Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, formerly of Kansas, traveled overseas from around September 2011 to May 2019 and engaged in terrorist acts in 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 to use AK-47 assault rifles, grenades and suicide belts. Over 100 women and girls, some as young as 10, received military training from Fluke-Ekren in Syria on behalf of ISIS, authorities alleged.
During the sentencing hearing, the court put in the record two separate letters submitted by Fluke-Ekren’s adult daughter and adult son, both of whom accused her of abusing them in Kansas and overseas while they were still minors.
Her daughter also delivered a victim impact statement in court describing abuse in Syria, including coercing her to marry an ISIS fighter, who raped her. She was 13 at the time.
Around 2008, Fluke-Ekren departed the U.S. and moved to Egypt with her now-deceased second husband, who was a member of the terrorist organization, Ansar al-Sharia.
In 2011, they lived in Benghazi, Libya. After the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. Special Mission and CIA Annex in Benghazi, Fluke-Ekren’s husband claimed that he removed at least one box of documents and at least one electronic device from the U.S. compound in Benghazi.
Fluke-Ekren assisted him in reviewing and summarizing the stolen contents. The documents and electronic device, along with the summaries, were then turned over to the leadership of the terrorist organization, Ansar al-Sharia in Benghazi, the government alleged.
