US Women Leaders Of The Women's Battalion Of ISIS Are Threatened With 20 Years In Prison

ISIS illustration. (Wikimedia Commons/VOA)

JAKARTA - An American woman raised on a farm in Kansas, joins ISIS in Syria, where she leads a military battalion of all women, faces punishment for providing support to terrorist groups.

Penyakit Fluke-Ekren (42), terancam hukuman 20 tahun penjara setelah memkarakan bersalah atas dugaan teror pada Juni di Pengadilan District AS di Alexandria, Virginia.

"For at least eight years, Fluke-Ekren carried out terrorist acts on behalf of three foreign terrorist organizations across war zones in Libya, Iraq and Syria," US Attorney Raj Parekh said.

"Fluke-Ekren brainwash young girls and train them to kill," Parekh said.

"He carved out a path of terror, plunged his own children to the depths of unexpected atrocities by abusing them physically, psychologically, emotionally and sexually," he explained.

Parekh urged Judge Leonie Brinkema to impose a maximum sentence of 20 years, tracing the Fluke-Ekren line from his care at a 33-heectar farm in Kansas, to his arrest in Syria following the 2019 territorial defeat to ISIS.

While other Americans traveled to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS, most were men. Fluke-Ekren is a US woman who occupies senior positions in the group that now no longer exists.

Born as▁penegakann Brooks, he grew up in a "loveful and stable house" in Overbrook, Kansas, and was considered a "common" student, the US prosecutor said.

He dropped out of high school in his second year, then married a local man named Fluke and had two children.

After leaving her first husband, Fluke-Ekren attended the University of Kansas, where she married a fellow student named Volkan Ekren. He then got a teaching certificate from a college in Indiana.

They had five children together and adopted another one after the child's parents died as suicide bombers in Syria.

In 2008, the family moved to Egypt and in 2011 to Libya, where he " pursues a position of power and influence to train young women in extremist ideology and violence begins," Parekh said.

They were in Benghazi in September 2012 when militant group Ansar Al Syariah attacked US missions and CIA offices there, killing US Ambassadors and three other Americans.

Fluke-Ekren, a fluent Arabic speaker, helped Ansar Al Syariah by "reviewing and summarizing the content of stolen US government documents."

The family left Libya in late 2012 or early 2013 and moved between Iraq, Turkey, and Syria, became heavily involved with ISIS and stayed in the group's stronghold in Mosul for a while.

After Fluke-Ekren's husband, leader of the ISIS sniper unit, was killed in 2015, he forced their daughter to marry an ISIS fighter, according to US lawyers.

After joining ISIS, Fluke-Ekren married three more times and have four more children. Her fourth husband is an ISIS military leader responsible for defending Raqqa in 2017.

In 2017, Fluke-Ekren became the battalion leader of a female ISIS member called the 'Katiba Nusaybah', which provided military training to more than 100 women and girls, according to US prosecutors.

"During the training session, Fluke-Ekren instructed young women and girls about the use of AK-47 assault rifles, grenades and suicide bomb belts," explained Parekh.

"One of the children, some of whom is 10 or 11 years old, is his own daughter," he concluded.