An American jihadist, who was one of the few leaders of a female battalion of the Daesh group, was sentenced to 20 years in prison by the American justice on Tuesday.
Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, pleaded guilty in June to “material support of a terrorist enterprise” and received the maximum sentence for the crime during a federal court hearing in Alexandria, near Washington.
“I deeply regret my choices,” said this mother, asking “forgiveness to all those who suffered from (her) acts.” But “I never got into a fight,” “I didn’t fire a single bullet,” she insisted, her hair covered in a black veil.
“Oum Mohammed al-Amiriki” had “become the empress of Daesh,” prosecutor Raj Parekh replied. She “brainwashed girls she trained to kill,” he added.
“Inexcusable”
Between 2012 and 2019, Allison Fluke-Ekren supported jihadist organizations in Libya, Iraq, and Syria, where she provided military training to more than 100 women. In June, she admitted to teaching her classmates, some of whom were only 10 or 11 years old, how to handle assault rifles or explosive belts. Her own children have suffered greatly from her radical drift.
One of her daughters, who was forced to “marry” a Daesh fighter when she was only 13, explained during the hearing that her mother was motivated by “a desire for control and power”.
“I want people to know what kind of person she is,” Leyla Ekren added with great emotion: “She left me in Raqqa with my rapist.”
In previously released written testimony, her son Gabriel judged his mother “an inexcusable monster.” “She has the blood and pain of all her children on her hands,” added the young man who attended the hearing without speaking.
attack plans
However, nothing seemed to consign her to such a course. Born Allison Brooks, she grew up on a farm, had an uneventful upbringing, and was married in a Methodist church in the late 1990s. Having become Mrs. Fluke, she had two children before divorcing.
She quickly remarried a man named Volkan Ekren and converted to Islam. In 2008, the couple – who will have a total of five children – moved to Egypt, where she began her radical drift.
In 2011, the family moved to Libya. According to the US Department of Justice, her husband stole documents following the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, and she helped him analyze and summarize them for Ansar al-Sharia, a jihadist group linked to al -Qaeda.
They joined Syria around 2012, where her husband became a Daesh sniper. Armed with a knowledge of weapons acquired on her parents’ farm, she is responsible for training other women in the basics of using AK-47s and grenades.
To “avenge” the children killed in an attack, he proposes to organize an attack on an American university. Pregnant, she leaves this project. Soon after, she foments a new plan: to attack a shopping center in the United States. This time, her husband discourages her from acting.
Source: BFM TV
