American woman leading female Daesh battalion in Syria on trial

Much of Raqqa, Syria, was destroyed by Daesh Takfiri terrorist group when it was taken back in 2017. (Photo by Reuters)

An American woman has been arrested and charged with joining the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group and leading an all-female battalion of militants, the US Justice Department has disclosed.

Allison Fluke-Ekren, a former Kansas teacher, who led the battalion in Syria named Khatiba Nusaybah, has been arrested by FBI for training women and children to use assault rifles and suicide belts, federal prosecutors said as they unsealed the criminal case.

A criminal complaint filed in 2019 in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, charges Fluke-Ekren with providing and conspiring to provide material support to Daesh.

Fluke-Ekren, 42, was previously apprehended in Syria and transferred into the custody of the FBI yesterday, at which point she was first brought to the Eastern District of Virginia.

She is expected to have her initial appearance at the federal courthouse in Alexandria on Monday, according to Department of Justice statement. If convicted, Fluke-Ekren, faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. She has not yet entered a plea, according to the news release.

The mother of five, allegedly trained her own children to use AK-47s and suicide belts, translated speeches made by Daesh Takfiri leaders, and is also suspected of recruiting operatives for a potential future attack on an American college campus, the DOJ said.

Fluke-Ekren allegedly told a witness about her desire to conduct an attack in the United States. “To conduct the attack, Fluke-Ekren allegedly explained that she could go to a shopping mall in the United States, park a vehicle full of explosives in the basement or parking garage level of the structure, and detonate the explosives in the vehicle with a cell phone triggering device,” the statement said.

Prosecutors said Fluke-Ekren left the US in 2008 for Egypt, lived there for about three years and then moved to Libya, where she stayed for about a year before sneaking into Syria with her husband, a Daesh sniper trainer.

Fluke-Ekren and her husband allegedly brought $15,000 into Syria to buy weapons, grenades and other military supplies. She has been involved in a vast array of activities on behalf of Daesh since at least 2014, prosecutors say.

There are approximately 5,000 European citizens who have traveled to Iraq and Syria during the decade as "foreign fighters" of whom approximately 20% are women and children, according to reports. This does not include the children born in Iraq and Syria to foreign fighters.

The western bloc, united to overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar Asad and replace a puppet regime, was aware of its citizens’ travel to Iraq and Syria. Many of them had committed crime and were controlled by police and security forces.

The governments even accelerated the deployment of these individuals and at that time many did not pay attention to the warning of the security risks Daesh fighters bring by their return to their homeland.

Now governments fear that welcoming back citizens that willingly joined Daesh would be a threat to the security of their nations and have set strict and unfair laws for their entry. Due to these laws, the Takfiri terrorists escape from prisons and revolt in order to survive and regain a foothold in the region after facing defeat at the hands of the Syrian army in 2019.

On Jan 20, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces launched an attack against the Ghwayran prison to free their comrades from the detention center, which was thought to hold some 3,500 Daesh inmates at the time of the assault.