A former US schoolteacher who grew to become a high-ranking Islamic State official and arranged an all-female IS navy battalion, pleaded responsible Tuesday to supporting a overseas terrorist group, the Justice division stated.
Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, admitted to partaking in “terrorism-related activities” in Syria, Libya, and Iraq between 2011 and 2019, the division stated in a press release.
“Fluke-Ekren ultimately served as the leader and organizer of an ISIS military battalion, known as the Khatiba Nusaybah, where she trained women on the use of automatic firing AK-47 assault rifles, grenades, and suicide belts,” the division stated.
“Over 100 women and young girls, including as young as 10 or 11-years-old, received military training from Fluke-Ekren in Syria on behalf of ISIS,” they stated, referring to the Islamic State.
The division stated that she had lived in Egypt after which Libya along with her late husband, who was a member of the extremist Ansar al-Sharia group.
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The two took paperwork from the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi after it was attacked in 2012 and summarized them for Ansar al-Sharia, it stated.
After that they went to Turkey and Syria, the place her husband grew to become a frontrunner of an Islamic State sniper group.
While in Syria, the division stated, she spoke of needs to bomb a shopping center or a college campus within the United States.
In 2016-17 she grew to become chief of the all-woman Khatiba Nusaybah battalion, which undertook bodily, medical and weapons coaching to assist the Islamic State.
Fluke-Ekren was apprehended in Syria someday after the early-2019 territorial defeat of the extremist group by US-led coalition forces.
She was flown to the United States on January 28 from an undisclosed location and charged with supporting a overseas terrorist group, a cost which brings as much as 20 years in jail.
She by no means went on trial, nevertheless. The courtroom report signifies that her attorneys and the Justice Department spent the previous months negotiating her responsible plea on a single depend.
She will likely be sentenced on October 25.
