IS battalion leader sentenced to 20 years in prison in US

A woman from Kansas has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after admitting to leading an all-female battalion of the Islamic State group.

Allison Fluke-Ekren also admitted to providing military training to more than 100 women and girls. Some of the girls were 10 years old.

She pleaded guilty in June.

According to the Department of Justice and public records reported by the BBC, in the early 2000s, she moved to the Middle East with her second husband. Her husband was a member of the Libyan militant group Ansar Al-Sharia and IS and has since died.

She was smuggled into Syria around 2012 and became a member of IS. She married other militants, two of which were killed in fighting.

In around 2016, she became a leader and organiser of Khatiba Nusayba, an all-female IS battalion in Raqqa.

It is believed, whilst she was there, she provided military training to women including how to use AK-47s, grenades and suicide belts. It is alleged that she recruited people for a potential terror attack in the US.

First Assistant US Attorney Raj Parekh said in a sentencing memo: "She carved a path of terror, plunging her own children into unfathomable depths of cruelty by physically, psychologically, emotionally and sexually abusing them."

Two of her twelve children have alleged that she sexually abused them. While admitting to her role in IS, Fluke-Ekren denied the allegations of abuse.

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