AN AMERICAN woman has been accused of assisting terrorist organizations.
Allison Elizabeth Fluke-Ekren, 42, allegedly organized and led an all-female ISIS battalion, according to the Department of Justice.
The DOJ released a press release on Saturday announcing that Fluke-Ekren is being charged with providing and conspiring to provide material support to the designated terrorist organization that is the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, also known as ISIS.
The release says that the former Kansas teacher was allegedly involved with a number of terrorist activities on behalf of ISIS after she traveled to Syria several years ago for the purpose of this terrorism.
Fluke-Ekren planned and recruited operatives for a planned attack on a US college campus in the future from at least 2014, according to the complaint.
She also allegedly served as the leader and organizer of an all-female ISIS military battalion called Khatiba Nusayabah that aimed to teach women that were married to male ISIS fighters how to use weapons like AK-47 assault rifles, grenades, and suicide belts.
“Additionally, Fluke-Ekren allegedly provided ISIS and ISIS members with services, which included providing lodging, translating speeches made by ISIS leaders, training children on the use of AK-47 assault rifles and suicide belts, and teaching extremist ISIS doctrine,” the release reads.
The 2019 criminal complaint that was unsealed on Saturday details six separate eyewitness accounts of people who observed her alleged terrorist conduct.
Fluke-Ekren allegedly 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.
According to court papers, Fluke-Ekren moved to Egypt in 2008 and frequently came back to the US until 2011, when she permanently moved.
Photos from a family blog called 4KansasKids show Fluke-Ekren and her children through the years they traveled between Kansas and Egypt, posing with the pyramids in Egypt as well as visiting friends in Wichita.
Prosecutors believe that she moved to Syria around 2012 with her husband, an ISIS sniper trainer.
Court papers say that Fluke-Ekren was apprehended in Syria before being transferred to the FBI’s custody in the Eastern District of Virginia on Friday, but it’s unclear when she was captured, or how long she was in custody in Syria.
She was brought back to the US on Friday to face charges in federal court.
A pair of assistant US attorneys named Raj Parekh and John T. Gibbs from the Eastern District of Virginia are prosecuting the case.
“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,” Parekh said Friday in a memo.
Fluke-Ekren is set to appear in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia on Monday at 2pm, where she’ll likely be appointed an attorney.
If convicted, Fluke-Ekren will face up to 20 years in prison.
