An American girl who prosecutors say led an all-female battalion of Islamic State militants in Syria might be sentenced in October after pleading responsible in a case that a prosecutor known as a primary of its form within the US.
Allison Fluke-Ekren broke down sobbing after admitting in federal courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia, to conspiring to offer materials assist to a overseas terrorist group, a cost that carries a most 20-year sentence.
The responsible plea resolves a felony case that got here to gentle in January after Fluke-Ekren, 42, who as soon as lived in Kansas, was delivered to the US to face accusations she led an Islamic State unit of ladies and younger women within the Syrian metropolis of Raqqa and skilled them in the usage of computerized rifles, grenades and suicide belts.
It's the first prosecution within the US of a feminine Islamic State battalion chief, stated Raj Parekh, a prosecutor within the case. Greater than 100 girls and younger women acquired coaching. Among the women, who had been as younger as 10 or 11, could want to communicate at Fluke-Ekren’s sentencing listening to.
“A few of them might need a chance to handle the courtroom as a result of we might argue that there's lifelong trauma and ache that has been inflicted on them,” Parekh stated.
Charging paperwork hint Fluke-Ekren’s travels and actions within the Center East over a decade, together with a transfer together with her second husband to Egypt in 2008. The paperwork don't make clear what impressed her alleged allegiance to overseas militant teams.
After transferring all through the area she settled in Syria in late 2012 or early 2013, the place her husband ascended to a management place within the Islamic State with accountability for coaching snipers.
In Syria, in accordance with one witness cited in courtroom paperwork, Fluke-Ekren spoke overtly about her need to conduct an assault within the US, together with by parking a automotive loaded with explosives in a shopping center storage. One other witness stated Fluke-Ekren mentioned concepts for a bomb assault on a school campus within the US midwest.
Prosecutors say that after Fluke-Ekren’s second husband was killed in an airstrike in February 2016, she spearheaded the creation of a girls’s heart that provided medical companies and childcare but additionally superior weapons coaching to dozens of ladies and younger women.
Her all-female battalion, referred to as Khatiba Nusaybah, started operations in 2017 with a purpose of educating feminine Islamic State members find out how to defend themselves and the territory of Raqqa, prosecutors say.
In 2018, Fluke-Ekren informed a witness she instructed somebody in Syria to get a message to her household that she was lifeless, so the US authorities wouldn't attempt to discover her.
The next 12 months, she ended her affiliation with the Islamic State and was smuggled out of its territory, in accordance with courtroom paperwork. Fluke-Ekren has stated she tried to show herself in at a police station as a result of she wished to depart Syria, and that about two weeks later she was taken into custody and held for months in jail.
A felony grievance towards Fluke-Ekren was filed underneath seal within the US in 2019 however not made public till she was delivered to Virginia in January.
Fluke-Ekren, who stated in courtroom she had a US grasp’s diploma in educating, moved to Egypt together with her second husband in 2008 and lived in Benghazi, Libya, in fall 2012, when an assault on US authorities services resulted within the deaths of 4 People.
Fluke-Ekren just isn't alleged to have performed any half in that assault however prosecutors say she helped her second husband evaluation and summarize paperwork he stated had been stolen from the US compound.
Fluke-Ekren admitted to the gist of the federal government’s allegations, although at one level she stated one of many witnesses quoted in courtroom paperwork was younger on the time of their interactions and should have come away with a unique understanding of their conversations. She additionally advised she had not deliberately skilled younger women.
Sentencing was set for 25 October. A lawyer for Fluke-Ekren declined to remark.
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