A woman who once lived in Kansas has been arrested after federal prosecutors accused her of joining the Islamic State group and leading an all-female battalion of AK-47 militants.

Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, has been charged with providing material support to a terrorist group, U.S. Attorneys in Alexandria, Virginia, announced Saturday.

The criminal complaint was filed under seal in 2019 but was made public Saturday after Fluke-Ekren was brought back to the U.S. on Friday to face charges. Her alleged involvement with the Islamic State had not been made public until Saturday’s announcement.

Prosecutors said Fluke-Ekren wanted to recruit agents to attack a U.S. college campus and discussed a terrorist attack on a shopping mall. According to an FBI affidavit, she told a witness, “she believes any attack that doesn’t kill a large number of people is a waste of resources.”

The affidavit by FBI special agent David Robbins also claimed that Fluke-Ekren became the leader of an Islamic State force known as “Khatiba Nusaybah” in the Syrian city of Raqqa in late 2016. The all-female unit was trained to use AK-47 rifles, grenades and suicide belts.

In all, the affidavit cites the opinions of six different witnesses, some of whom have been charged with terrorism offences and others who are being held in prison camps for former Islamic State members.

A detention memo filed Friday by 1st Assistant U.S. Attorney Raj Parekh noted that Fluke-Ekren even trained children how to use an assault rifle, and that at least one witness saw one of Fluke-Ekren’s children, about 5 or 6 years old, take a with a machine at home in Syria with guns.

“For many years, Fluke-Ekren has been a fanatical follower of ISIS’s radical terrorist ideology, having traveled to Syria to engage in or support violent jihad. Fluke-Ekren has translated her extremist beliefs into action, serving as the designated leader of ISIS military battalions and organizers, directly training women and children to use AK-47 assault rifles, grenades and suicide belts in support of ISIS murder targets,” Parek wrote.

Fluke-Ekren moved to Egypt in 2008 and traveled frequently between Egypt and the United States for the next three years, according to court documents. She has not been to the United States since 2011.

Prosecutors believe she moved to Syria around 2012. Prosecutors said her husband was killed in early 2016 in an attempted terrorist attack in the Syrian city of Ter Abyad. Later that year, prosecutors said she was married to a Bangladeshi ISIS member who specialized in drone research, but he died in late 2016 or early 2017.

Four months after the man’s death, she remarried a prominent Islamic State leader in charge of the Islamic State group’s defense of Raqqa.

Complete News Source : Hindustan Times