A woman from Kansas was detained after federal prosecutors accused her of joining the Islamic State and commanding an all-female battalion of AK-47-wielding fighters.
Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, has been charged with giving material assistance to a terrorist organization, according to the US Attorney’s office in Alexandria, Virginia.
The criminal complaint was originally filed under seal in 2019, but it was made public on Saturday when Fluke-Ekren was extradited to the United States on Friday to face accusations. Her apparent involvement with the Islamic State had not been made public before Saturday’s announcement.
Prosecutors say Fluke-Ekren wanted to recruit operatives to attack a college campus in the U.S. and discussed a terrorist attack on a shopping mall. She told one witness that “she considered any attack that did not kill a large number of individuals to be a waste of resources,” according to an FBI affidavit.
Prosecutors say she was a ‘fervent believer’ of ISIS ideology
Fluke-Ekren allegedly became the leader of an Islamic State unit called “Khatib Nusaybah” in the Syrian city of Raqqa in late 2016, according to an affidavit by an FBI Special Agent David Robins. All of the women in the battalion were taught how to use AK-47 weapons, grenades, and suicide belts.
The document cites statements from six separate witnesses, including those who have been charged with terrorism and others who have been incarcerated at former Islamic State prison camps.
Fluke-Ekren even taught youngsters how to use assault rifles, according to a detention letter filed Friday by First Assistant U.S. Attorney Raj Parekh, and at least one witness saw one of Fluke-children, Ekren’s about 5 or 6 years old, carrying a machine gun in the family’s home in Syria.
“Fluke-Ekren has been a fervent believer in the radical terrorist ideology of ISIS for many years, having traveled to Syria to commit or support violent jihad. Fluke-Ekren translated her extremist beliefs into action by serving as the appointed leader and organizer of an ISIS military battalion, directly training women and children in the use of AK-47 assault rifles, grenades, and suicide belts to support the Islamic State’s murderous aims,” Parekh wrote.
From Kansas to Syria
Fluke-Ekren relocated to Egypt in 2008, according to court documents, and travelled often between Egypt and the United States over the next three years. She hasn’t visited the United States since 2011.
Prosecutors suspect she relocated to Syria in around 2012. Prosecutors stated her spouse was killed in the Syrian city of Tell Abyad in early 2016 while attempting to carry out a terrorist assault. Prosecutors believe she married a Bangladeshi ISIS member who specialized in drones later that year, but he died in late 2016 or early 2017, according to prosecutors.
She remarried a key Islamic State leader who was in charge of the Islamic State’s defense of Raqqa four months after that man’s death.
According to Parekh’s letter, she told one witness in 2018 that she told a person in Syria to tell Fluke-family Ekren’s that she was dead so the US government wouldn’t try to find her.
Photos from a family blog called 4KansasKids show her and her children posing at the base of the pyramids in Egypt and playing in the snow in the United States during the years they moved between Kansas and Egypt.
A 2004 article about homeschooling in the Lawrence Journal-World featured Fluke-Ekren and her children. She informed the newspaper that she withdrew her children out of public school because she was unhappy with their performance in both public and private schools. She was able to teach Arabic to her children because she was homeschooled.
As per Npr, court documents do not say how she was captured or how long she was held before being handed over to the FBI on Friday.
On Monday, she will make her initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, where she will most likely be assigned an attorney.
