A US-born mother who provided military training to kids as young as six for an ISIS attack on an American college has pleaded guilty to providing material support for terrorism.
On Tuesday, Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, admitted in an Alexandria, Virginia, federal court that in 2017 she was the leader of the Khatiba Nusaybah, a female ISIS unit in the Syrian city of Raqqa.
Fluke-Ekren admitted that she gave over 100 women and young girls military training but claimed she didn't purposefully train children.
"We didn’t intentionally train any young girls. They may have been in attendance,” she said in court.
As the leader of the Khatiba Nusaybah, her job included medical training, religious classes, martial arts instruction, as well as courses on vehicle bombings and how to pack a “go bag” with rifles and military supplies, she admitted in the plea documents.
Fluke-Ekren provided only some of this training herself, the documents say.
Officials also say the terrorism group trained in using AK-47 rifles, grenades, and suicide belts.
Children were taught how to use assault rifles and at least one witness saw one of her children - approximately six or seven years old - holding a machine gun in the family’s home in Syria.
Prosecutors claimed the suspect wanted to recruit operatives to attack a college campus in the US and discussed a terrorist attack on a shopping mall.
She allegedly told one witness that “she considered any attack that did not kill a large number of individuals to be a waste of resources,” according to an FBI affidavit.
US Attorney Raj Parekh described Fluke-Ekren as “a fervent believer in the radical terrorist ideology of ISIS for many years.”
Federal prosecutors disclosed on Tuesday that the suspect assisted leaders of Ansar al-Sharia, the terrorist group behind the 2012 attack that killed four Americans in Libya.
She reportedly provided summaries of documents she said her husband had stolen from a US compound in Benghazi in the aftermath of the strike.
The suspect was not accused of involvement in the attack itself.
Fluke-Ekren, who lived in Kansas, was captured in Syria in January and extradited to the US to face a criminal charge of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.
The former teacher moved with her children and second husband to Egypt in 2008 and aided terrorist groups for more than six years while in Iraq, Libya and Syria, according to documents filed with her plea.
By 2011, she was allegedly involved in working with ISIS and became the leader of the Khatiba Nusaybah unit in late 2016.
That same year, Fluke-Ekren’s husband oversaw Islamic State snipers in Syria, court docs said.
The former teacher's husband died in 2016 after he reportedly attempted to carry out a terrorist attack in Syria.
During her court appearance Tuesday, she was spotted wearing a black hijab and white face mask, and began to sob near the end of the hearing when Judge Leonie M. Brinkema mentioned her children.
Fluke-Ekren faces up to 20 years in prison at her sentencing on October 25. She was denied bail.
Larry Miller was Fluke-Ekren's science teacher in Topeka in the 1990s.
He expressed his shock over learning of his former student's ties to ISIS to the BBC.
"She was a very, very good student. She was intelligent and had a sense of humor."
"Her parents were very, very supportive."
Miller recalled receiving an email from Fluke-Ekren about 15 years ago, in which she shared her admiration for him and his work as a teacher.
"It was this really nice letter, saying how she had this love for science and nature, and that she was getting a degree to teach," he told the BBC.
"She never did anything that indicated to me that she wanted to harm another living thing," he said.
"I can't understand how someone who has such a love of nature and people would do that."
Fluke-Ekren is not the first Topeka native to be sentenced for turning against the US.
John Booker Jr., a 2012 graduate of Topeka West High School, enlisted in the Army in February 2014.
After studying religion, Booker - a former Christian - allegedly determined that the only faith was Islam.
Upon enlisting, Booker shared a post on Facebook stating that he wanted to join the Army to "wage holy war from within," according to The Topeka-Capital Journal.
Booker was then questioned by the FBI and allegedly told agents of his desire to enlist so that he could kill US soldiers. He was then prevented from enlisting.
He attempted a suicide bombing at Fort Riley in 2015, but was foiled by FBI informants who had been acting alongside him throughout his planning.
Ana Montes spent most of the 1960s in Topeka with her family before moving to Maryland.
She took a job with the US Defense Intelligence Agency in 1985 and became a top analyst for matters pertaining to Cuba, according to the Journal.
But Montes allegedly memorized information on the job, typed it into a personal laptop at her home, and then passed it along to Cuba.
The DIA received a tip about Montes in 2000 and investigated. She was arrested in September 2001, days after the 9/11 attacks.
Both Booker and Montes are currently serving their sentences. Booker is set to be released in 2040, while Montes' sentence ends in January 2023.
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