Family details horrific abuse at hands of female Islamic ISIS leader

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A Kansas native convicted of leading an all-female battalion of the Islamic State group had a long history of monstrous behavior that included sexual and physical abuse of her own children, family members said in court filings.

Prosecutors cited the abuse allegations in seeking a maximum 20-year sentence for Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, when she is sentenced Nov. 1 for providing material support to the Islamic State group.

“Allison Fluke-Ekren brainwashed young girls and trained them to kill. She carved a path of terror, plunging her own children into unfathomable depths of cruelty by physically, psychologically, emotionally, and sexually abusing them,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Raj Parekh wrote in a sentencing memo spelling out the allegations Fluke-Ekren’s own children and parents have made against her.

Fluke-Ekren pleaded guilty to terrorism charges after she admitted that she led the Khatiba Nusaybah, an all-female battalion of the Islamic State, in which roughly 100 women and girls — some as young as 10 years old — learned how to use automatic weapons and detonate grenades and suicide belts.

Parekh’s sentencing memo spells out how Fluke-Ekren went from a childhood on an 81-acre farm in Overbrook, Kansas, to an Islamic State leader, traveling from Kansas to Egypt to Libya and then to Islamic State-controlled territory in Syria. Along the way she had 12 children and five different husbands, several of whom were killed in fighting.