A US judge has sentenced a Kansas woman who led an all-female ISIL (ISIS) battalion in Syria to a maximum of 20 years in prison after Allison Fluke-Ekren pleaded guilty to “terrorism” charges earlier this year. During a hearing in federal court in northern Virginia on Tuesday, Fluke-Ekren said in a lengthy speech that she accepted responsibility for her actions but spent most of her time rationalizing and minimizing her behavior. “We just lived a very normal life,” she told the judge of her time in Syria, showing photos of her children at a weekly pizza dinner. Prosecutors described Fluke-Ekren as the “Empress of ISIS,” accusing her of training women and girls as young as 10 in how to use automatic weapons and detonate grenades and suicide belts. Authorities say the 42-year-old also discussed carrying out attacks inside the United States. After being captured in Syria, Fluke-Ekren was transferred to the US in late January to face charges. Her own children sued her in court and described being physically and sexually abused by their mother. Fluke-Ekren’s daughter said in a victim impact statement read at Tuesday’s hearing that a “lust for control and power” led her mother to take the family halfway around the world to find the ISIL (ISIS) group. She said her mother was good at hiding the abuse she caused. She described an incident where her mother allegedly poured a foreign lice medicine all over her face as punishment, causing her face to blister and her eyes to burn. Fluke-Ekren then tried to wash off the chemicals, but her daughter resisted. “I wanted people to see what kind of person he was. I wanted him to blind me,” she said. Fluke-Ekren has denied the abuse allegations. She also depicted the women’s brigade she led as akin to a women’s community center that turned into a series of self-defense classes as it became clear that the city of Raqqa, the ISIL (ISIS) stronghold where she lived, faced an invasion. First Assistant US Attorney Raj Parekh said that even within ISIL (ISIS), people who knew Fluke-Ekren described her ideology as “off the charts”. Fluke-Ekren’s actions “added a new dimension to the darker side of humanity,” Parekh said. Fluke-Ekren, whose family is from the US Midwest, worked as a teacher in the US before leaving the country and then joining ISIL (ISIS) in Syria, according to the Justice Department. ISIL (ISIS) controlled large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria from 2014 until its territorial defeat in late 2017. During that time, the group, which had declared a “caliphate” and inspired attacks on political targets around the world, attracted thousands of foreign fighters, including from Europe and the US. In late April, a US judge sentenced UK-born former member of the ISIL (ISIS) cell known as ‘the Beatles’ Alexanda Kotey to life in prison.
