(Headline USA) An American woman is set to plead guilty Tuesday to leading an all-female battalion of Islamic State militants in Syria, court records show.
A plea hearing for Allison Fluke–Ekren is to take place in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, according to a court notation. Her lawyer did not immediately return an email seeking comment.
Fluke–Ekren, who once lived in Kansas, was brought to the U.S. in January to face a criminal charge of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization. She moved to Egypt in 2008 and starting in late 2016, according to prosecutors, she led an all-female Islamic State unit in the Syrian city of Raqqa that was trained in the use of AK-47 rifles, grenades and suicide belts.
A detention memo filed by First Assistant U.S. Attorney Raj Parekh says she trained children how to use assault rifles and at least one witness saw one of her children—approximately 6 or 7 years old—holding a machine gun in the family’s home in Syria.
Prosecutors have also said Fluke–Ekren wanted to recruit operatives to attack a college campus in the U.S. and discussed a terrorist attack on a shopping mall.
She told one witness that “she considered any attack that did not kill a large number of individuals to be a waste of resources,” according to an FBI affidavit.
A criminal complaint against Fluke–Ekren was filed under seal in 2019 but not made public until she was brought back to the U.S. to face charges.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
