An American woman who led an all-female Islamic State battalion was sentenced to 20 years in prison Tuesday after she admitted to training dozens of women and girls in Syria for the militant group known as ISIS, federal authorities said.
At a sentencing hearing Tuesday, the adult daughter of Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, accused her mother of severe abuse, including coercing her to marry an ISIS fighter, the federal prosecutor’s office in Virginia’s Eastern District said in a news release.
The daughter was 13 at the time, the release said.
Fluke-Ekren’s adult son, who also spoke during the hearing, said his mother tried to persuade him to leave the U.S. for Syria to prevent him from providing information to authorities that could “compromise her,” the release said.
The prison term given to Fluke-Ekren, formerly of Kansas, was the maximum sentence allowed under a plea agreement reached in June.
A lawyer for Fluke-Ekren declined to comment Tuesday. In a court filing Monday, her lawyers described the abuse allegations as "uncorroborated" and "un-investigated."
Some of the claims are "so outrageous they are inherently incredible," the filing added.
According to the prosecutor's office, Fluke-Ekren left the U.S. for Egypt in 2008 with her second husband, who later became ISIS' sniper leader in Syria. After he was killed in an airstrike in 2016, Fluke-Ekren married a drone expert.
After having spent time in Libya and Iraq, Fluke-Ekren — who was fluent in Arabic, Turkish and English — traveled to Raqqa, Syria, in 2016, the prosecutor's office said.
Fluke-Ekren trained female ISIS members through a women's center and in the all-female battalion known as Khatiba Nusaybah, the prosecutor's office said.
Fluke-Ekren taught trainees how to use AK-47 rifles, grenades and suicide belts packed with explosives, the prosecutor's office said. Some battalion members were also given specialized training in martial arts, medical aid and driving tactics, the release said.
Fluke-Ekren trained more than 100 women and girls, some as young as 10, according to the release.
To avoid capture by U.S. authorities, Fluke-Ekren told a person the prosecutor's office identified as a witness to send a message informing a relative of her death, the release said.
A criminal complaint detailing federal charges against Fluke-Ekren was filed in 2019. She was captured in Syria and taken into FBI custody this year.
