Allison Fluke-Ekren

Allison Elizabeth Fluke-Ekren (born 1980) is an American woman who joined the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria and was in charge of an all-female ISIL battalion called Khatibah Nusaybah. In 2022 she pleaded guilty to providing material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization and was sentenced to the maximum term of 20 years in prison. The prosecution described her as an "empress" of ISIL.

Background and education Fluke-Ekren was born in Lawrence, Kansas and grew up on an 81-acre farm in Overbrook, Kansas. She attended the Topeka Collegiate School and Topeka High School. Her parents described her as manipulative, and when they were children she once tried to drown her brother in a lake. She married in 1996 at age 16 and had a son and daughter. Her first husband would later call her a "con artist" and a "cheat". In 2002, the couple divorced. That same year, Fluke-Ekren converted to Islam. Fluke-Ekren studied biology at the University of Kansas, then taught at the Islamic School of Greater Kansas City. The friend realized she had been radicalized and told others who knew Fluke-Ekren about her concerns, but they didn't believe her. Fluke-Ekren's children stated she physically abused them during this time, and her oldest son left Egypt to live with his father in the United States. They joined Al-Nusra Front, and her husband worked for them as a translator. The family lived in an abandoned factory in Aleppo. Fluke-Ekren wanted to establish an Al-Nusra battalion for women and girls, but the organization refused, so she made her daughter Leyla Ekren, then age 10 and sick with typhoid fever, do military training. After about six weeks, Fluke-Ekren took Leyla to Turkey to get her medical attention, leaving her husband in Syria. He eventually left Al-Nusra and became a leader in ISIL. She trained over 100 women and girls as young as ten years old. Fluke-Ekren was still in Syria, and asked someone to send a message to her family and trick them into thinking she was dead. Leyla believed her mother would try to contact her, so she set up a social media account and coordinated with the FBI to record her communications with her mother. In December 2020, Fluke-Ekren did contact her daughter, and the FBI learned her whereabouts.

In a letter to the court, two of her now-adult children described her as a "monster" who had sexually abused them. Chhipa was sentenced to 30 years in prison.