Allison Fluke-Ekren, an American woman and former Kansas teacher, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for leading an all-female ISIS battalion in Syria, training the participants in using rifles and explosives.
The 42-year-old was born in Lawrence, Kansas, and pleaded guilty in June to conspiring to support a foreign terrorist organization, the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS). Counterterrorism experts argued that the suspect represented an unusual case of a woman commanding power in the traditionally male-dominated culture of Islamic jihad.
All-Female ISIS Battalion
The suspect's father and grandfather were both U.S. military veterans but she instead committed terrorist acts during her eight years in Libya, Iraq, and Syria. She is also believed to have planned mass-casualty attacks in the United States, prosecutors said. They argued that the 20-year maximum sentence would not be sufficient for Fluke-Ekren's crimes.
United States District Judge Leonie Brinkema sentenced the suspect to 25 years of probation, beyond the prison term. The defendant's lawyers had urged the judge to order an unspecified shorter sentence because of the trauma and loss that Flue-Ekren experienced, as per USA Today.
Three of the suspect's husbands and two children had died overseas and they argued that she suffered post-traumatic stress syndrome in Syria and abandoned violence when she stopped being part of the terror group in May 2019.
Flue-Ekren served as the leader of an all-female Islamic State group military battalion in Syria and trained women and children how to use AK-47 assault rifles, grenades, and suicide belts. The suspect reportedly trained more than 100 women and girls as young as 10 years old.
According to CNN, during Tuesday's sentencing hearing, prosecutor Raj Parekh called the former Kansas teacher the "Empress of ISIS" who he argued brainwashed young girls and trained them to kill in the name of the terror group.
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ISIS Trains Women and Young Girls
Parekh said that Fluke-Ekren became a warped visionary for the terrorist group and was attracted to death and destruction. The prosecutor noted that the suspect repeatedly lied to the United States government and refused to cooperate, adding that she could have been a "goldmine of intelligence."
One of the suspect's daughters, Leyla Ekren, who assisted the U.S. government in its case against her mother, testified that her mother abused her and her siblings and married her off as a "sex slave."
The young Ekren told the judge that she was given away as a bride to an ISIS fighter who she referred to repeatedly as "my rapist" when she was only 13 years old. It was part of an effort for her mother to gain more power in the terrorist organization.
In a lengthy speech during a hearing in federal court in northern Virginia on Tuesday, the suspect said that she took responsibility for her actions. Fluke-Ekren spent most of the time during the hearing rationalizing and minimizing her conduct.
The defendant told the judge that she lived a very normal life during her time in Syria, even showing pictures of her children at a weekly pizza dinner. She was captured in Syria and brought to the U.S. in late January to face charges, Aljazeera reported.
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