FALLS CHURCH, Va. — A lady who as soon as lived in Kansas has been arrested after federal prosecutors charged her with becoming a member of the Islamic State group and main an all-female battalion of AK-47 wielding militants.
The U.S. Legal professional in Alexandria, Virginia, introduced Saturday that Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, has been charged with offering materials help to a terrorist group.
The legal grievance was filed underneath seal again in 2019 however made public Saturday after Fluke-Ekren was introduced again to the U.S. Friday to face expenses. Her alleged participation within the Islamic State had not been publicly recognized earlier than Saturday’s announcement.
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Prosecutors say Fluke-Ekren needed to recruit operatives to assault a school campus within the U.S. and mentioned a terrorist assault on a shopping center. She informed one witness that “she thought-about any assault that didn’t kill numerous people to be a waste of sources,” in line with an FBI affidavit.
That affidavit from FBI Particular Agent David Robins additionally alleges that Fluke-Ekren turned chief of an Islamic State unit known as “Khatiba Nusaybah” within the Syrian metropolis of Raqqa in late 2016. The all-female unit was educated in using AK-47 rifles, grenades and suicide belts.
In all, the affidavit cites observations from six totally different witnesses, together with some who’ve been charged with terrorism offenses and a few who had been held at jail camps for former Islamic state members.
A detention memo filed Friday by First Assistant U.S. Legal professional Raj Parekh states that Fluke-Ekren even educated youngsters how you can use assault rifles, and that not less than one witness noticed considered one of Fluke-Ekren’s youngsters, roughly 5 or 6 years previous, holding a machine gun within the household’s residence in Syria.
“Fluke-Ekren has been a fervent believer within the radical terrorist ideology of ISIS for a few years, having traveled to Syria to commit or help violent jihad. Fluke-Ekren translated her extremist beliefs into motion by serving because the appointed chief and organizer of an ISIS army battalion, straight coaching girls and kids in using AK-47 assault rifles, grenades, and suicide belts to help the Islamic State’s murderous goals,” Parekh wrote.
In accordance with court docket papers, Fluke-Ekren moved to Egypt in 2008 and traveled regularly between Egypt and the U.S. over the subsequent three years. She has not been within the U.S. since 2011.
Prosecutors imagine she moved to Syria round 2012. In early 2016, her husband was killed within the Syrian metropolis of Inform Abyad whereas attempting to hold out a terrorist assault, prosecutors mentioned. Later that yr, prosecutors say she married a Bangladeshi ISIS member who specialised in drones, however he died in late 2016 or early 2017.
4 months after that man’s loss of life, she once more remarried a distinguished Islamic state chief who was answerable for the Islamic State group’s protection of Raqqa.
She informed one witness in 2018 that she instructed an individual in Syria to inform Fluke-Ekren’s Household she was lifeless so the U.S. authorities wouldn’t attempt to discover her, in line with Parekh’s memo.
Photographs from a household weblog known as 4KansasKids present her and her youngsters within the years they traveled between Kansas and Egypt, posing on the base of the pyramids in Egypt and taking part in within the snow within the U.S.
A 2004 article about homeschooling within the Lawrence Journal-World featured Fluke-Ekren and her youngsters. She informed the paper she pulled her children from public faculty as a result of she was dissatisfied with how her youngsters had been performing in private and non-private faculties. Homeschooling allowed her to show Arabic to her children.
Courtroom papers don’t point out how she was captured, or how lengthy she was in custody earlier than being turned over to the FBI Friday.
She is scheduled to make an preliminary look at U.S. District Courtroom in Alexandria on Monday, at which era she would possible be appointed an lawyer.
