Kansas woman who led ISIS battalion pleads guilty to terrorism charge: prosecutors
A Kansas native who left the U.S. more than a decade ago and later led an all-female battalion of ISIS fighters pleaded guilty Tuesday to participating in a conspiracy to support terrorism, according to federal prosecutors.
Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, formerly of Topeka, pleaded guilty to a single felony charge during a hearing in the Eastern District of Virginia. In accepting a plea agreement, Fluke-Ekren admitted that she was once the leader of Khatiba Nusaybah, a female ISIS group tasked with defending ISIS interests in the Syrian city of Raqqa.
Established sometime in 2016, the battalion members were instructed how to defend against enemies of ISIS. One of the aspirations of the group was to train fighters to sneak behind enemy positions with AK-47s and detonate explosives after ammunition ran out, according to court papers.
Members were also trained in martial arts, medical knowledge, driving through terrain with improvised explosives and prepping a “go bag” with rifles and other military supplies. Over the course of her time overseas, Fluke-Ekren allegedly helped to teach more than 100 women and girls — some as young as 10 or 11 years old — to use AK-47s, grenades and suicide belts.
Fluke-Ekren studied biology at the University of Kansas and later went on to study education at Earlham College in Indiana, according to a summary of facts filed in the court on Tuesday. After marrying her second husband, she left the U.S. for Egypt sometime in 2008, later making her way through Libya, Iraq and Syria.
Other details emerged Tuesday that Fluke-Ekren assisted her husband with reviewing and summarizing documents stolen during the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, where four Americans were killed. She allegedly provided details from the documents to leaders of the terrorist organization Ansar al-Sharia.
The husband she left the U.S. with eventually became a leader of ISIS snipers in Syria, according to court papers. He was later killed in a drone strike. She married two other ISIS men who died for the cause, including another killed in a U.S. drone strike.
During interviews with investigators, witnesses who spoke with Fluke-Ekren during her time overseas said she discussed ideas for an attack on U.S. soil. She allegedly thought locations with a high number of people were the best targets and wished terrorist attacks that unfolded in other countries had occurred in the U.S.
One idea she raised was parking a vehicle filled with explosives at a shopping mall parking garage and detonating the device from a cellphone. She also discussed ideas for an attack on the campus of a Midwestern college involving explosives, according to court papers.
Fluke-Ekren in 2018 asked an ISIS affiliate to help get a message to a family member saying she was dead so that the U.S. government would stop looking for her. She allegedly said she wished to “die in Syria as a martyr,” according to court papers.
Court papers say Fluke-Ekren remained affiliated with ISIS until around May 2019, when she was smuggled out of ISIS territory and married a fifth time. She turned herself over to a local Syrian police force in the summer of 2021 and was kept in a prison until she was extradited to the U.S. in January.
Under federal law, she faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. An attorney for Fluke-Ekren declined to comment to The Star.
