Children of US woman who led Isis female battalion describe sex abuse at her hands

A Kansas native convicted of leading an all-female battalion of the Islamic State group had a long history of monstrous behaviour that included sexual and physical abuse of her own children, family members said in court filings.

Prosecutors cited the abuse allegations in seeking a maximum 20-year sentence for Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, when she is sentenced November 1 for providing material support to the Islamic State group.

“Allison Fluke-Ekren brainwashed young girls and trained them to kill. She carved a path of terror, plunging her own children into unfathomable depths of cruelty by physically, psychologically, emotionally, and sexually abusing them,” First Assistant US Attorney Raj Parekh wrote in a sentencing memo spelling out the allegations Fluke-Ekren’s own children and parents have made against her.

Fluke-Ekren pleaded guilty to terrorism charges after she admitted that she led the Khatiba Nusaybah, an all-female battalion of Islamic State, in which roughly 100 women and girls – some as young as 10 years old – learned how to use automatic weapons and detonate grenades and suicide belts.

Parekh’s sentencing memo spells out how Fluke-Ekren went from a childhood on an 81-acre farm in Overbrook, Kansas, to an Islamic State leader, travelling from Kansas to Egypt to Libya and then to Islamic State-controlled territory in Syria. Along the way she had 12 children and five different husbands, several of whom were killed in fighting.

Through all the years, family and acquaintances of Fluke-Ekren portrayed her as the driving force who pushed her second husband into radicalisation and convinced him to take her and the children to Egypt.