US woman pleads guilty to leading all-female ISIS unit

WASHINGTON – An American woman has pleaded guilty to forming and leading an all-female ISIS militant battalion to fight on the group’s behalf in Syria, the Justice Department has announced.

Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, admitted to having provided material support or resources to a foreign militant organization, and is scheduled to be sentenced on October 25. She faces up to 20 years in prison.

She specifically acknowledged forming the Khatiba Nusaybah in which she trained more than 100 women to fight on ISIS’s behalf to defend its former capital of Raqqah in Syria, according to the department.

Fluke-Ekrean, a trained teacher and convert to Islam from the state of Kansas, is the first American woman to be prosecuted for a leadership role in a violent international group.

Court documents say Fluke-Ekren moved to Egypt with her second husband, Volkan Ekren, a now deceased member of the Ansar al-Sharia group, in 2008 before moving to Libya in 2011. In 2012, she traveled from Libya to Turkey and then to Syria, which was in the midst of a spiraling conflict.

Her husband became the ISIS leader for snipers in Syria in 2014. In 2016, she was appointed to found and lead a “women’s center” in Raqqah where she was tasked with training women in handling AK-47 assault rifles, grenades and suicide belts.

The Khatiba Nusaybah formally began operations in February 2017 as ISIS’s territorial holdings began to collapse in Syria. Raqqah fell in October of that year.

Fluke-Ekren attempted to flee. However, she was brought to the US in January after being held in custody in Syria.