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Children of US woman who led Isis female battalion
describe sex abuse at her hands
Allison Fluke-Ekren’s daughter and son detail how they were beaten and molested;
other relatives say she laughed as she spoke of trying to drown her own brother
US prosecutors are seeking a maximum 20-year sentence for the Kansas native, who they say
‘brainwashed young girls and trained them to kill’ for Islamic State
Associated Press
Published: 6:33am, 25 Oct, 2022
Allison Fluke-Ekren is seen in an undated photo. Photo: Alexandria Sheriff’s Office via AP
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.
Her plans for an all-female battalion were ignored and rejected by other terrorist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, and only Islamic State finally acquiesced to her idea, prosecutors said.
Fluke-Ekren’s parents describe her as manipulative and difficult from the start. Family members describe how she would laughingly tell the story of how she tried to drown her brother in an icy lake as children.
Perhaps most disturbing in a laundry list of disturbing reports are allegations from two of her children that she engaged in sexual abuse of her kids.
“My mother would beat my body, leaving my muscles cramping in agony. [She] would then go to her room and masturbate over the fact that she beat me. I could hear her from the other room,” one of Fluke-Ekren’s daughters, now an adult, wrote in a letter to the court. She is expected to testify at Fluke-Ekren’s sentencing hearing.
Isis militants in Tel Abyad, northeast Syria, in 2015. File photo: AP
Fluke-Ekren’s oldest child, a son, also says he was molested.
“My mother is a monster who enjoys torturing children for sexual pleasure,” he wrote in his own letter to the court.
It is unclear to what extent the abuse allegations will affect the sentence imposed by US District Judge Leonie Brinkema because they are not directly related to the terrorism crimes. The daughter will be allowed to testify at the sentencing hearing because she was a victim of the terrorism – her mother enrolled her in the Khatiba Nusaybah as a child. The son is not expected to testify.
Fluke-Ekren, for her part, is denying many of the abuse allegations. She has complained that she has an inadequate opportunity to refute her family’s statements.
Fluke-Ekren “is shocked and saddened by these allegations but acknowledges Witness-1 [her daughter] experienced trauma in Syria,” defence lawyer Joseph King wrote in his sentencing memo, which seeks a sentence below 20 years. “She cannot undo the pain that she caused in taking Witness-1 to Syria.”
Her son said Fluke-Ekren has a long history of denying abuse and people choosing to believe her over her children. “I know her and I know she wants to lie her way out of this, to get a slap on the wrist and try to use a sob story to once again get power and access to victims,” the son wrote.
Other allegations included in prosecutors sentencing memo:
She urged a woman to commit a suicide bombing. When the woman said she could no longer carry out an attack because she was pregnant, Fluke-Ekren took in the child after his birth so the woman could go forward with the attack.
She told others that her oldest son was born after she was raped by an American soldier as a way to ingratiate herself inside the terrorist groups where she sought to increase her status.
She forced her 13-year-old daughter to marry an Islamic State fighter.
In Libya, she sought to establish a school for girls in which she showed young girls videos of Iraqi women being raped by American soldiers. “She would tell us that if we didn’t kill the ‘kuffar’ [non-believer] that we would be raped,” the daughter wrote in court papers about the experience.
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At least 2 Canadian women and their children repatriated
from ISIS detention camp
Ashley Burke, Margaret Evans, Stephanie Jenzer ·
CBC News · Posted: Oct 25, 2022 11:33 AM ET |
A source with direct knowledge of the file said they received information that Canadian Kimberly Polman is out of the camp and her tent has been taken down. (The Return: Life After ISIS)
At least two Canadian women have left a detention camp in Syria holding ISIS fighters and their family members, CBC News has learned.
The women left the al-Roj camp in northeastern Syria headed for northern Iraq on Tuesday morning with an unknown number of children, according to multiple sources.
The expectation is that the women and children will be repatriated to Canada, the sources said.
A source with direct knowledge of the file said they've learned that Canadian Kimberly Polman is out of the camp and her tent has been taken down. A second source said they also received information that Polman has left the camp.
Polman, who was featured in the documentary "The Return: Life after ISIS," said she was in a "terrible place" when she was found online by the ISIS member who later became her husband.
When Kimberly Polman's children grew up, she found herself alone. She met an ISIS member online and he said, "Come where you're actually loved, where you're actually needed."
Canada's position has been that, for security reasons, it will not send consular assistance to meet these women, even though a number of other western countries have done so.
The Canadian government's involvement in this ongoing repatriation effort is not clear. CBC News has asked the federal government for confirmation of the repatriation.
CBC News asked Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino about the government's involvement. "We don't talk about any individual case," he replied.
"We're always mindful of making sure that we're protecting the safety and security of Canadians."
U.S. diplomat Peter Galbraith helped to free a 4-year-old Canadian girl in March 2021 and called on Canada to repatriate all of the children still stranded there.
Months later, the Canadian government issued an emergency passport to the mother of the 4-year-old so she could return home to Canada and reunite with her daughter.
Global Affairs Canada said at the time that "given the security situation on the ground, the Government of Canada's ability to provide any kind of consular assistance in Syria remains extremely limited."
But the department said consular officials were "actively engaged with Syrian Kurdish authorities to seek information on Canadians in their custody."
As word spreads in the al-Roj Syrian detention camp for families of ISIS fighters that a four-year-old Canadian girl was freed, other mothers grapple with sending their own children to safety. Some say they couldn't survive without them, while others beg Canada to bring them to safety.
According to a Human Rights Watch estimate in March 2021, at least 23 Canadian children — most of them under the age of six — remained in detention camps in Syria at the time.
Many are living in al-Roj and al-Hol, where hundreds of adults and children have died from the fighting in the region or from a lack of medical care or unsanitary conditions, the group said.
Meanwhile, there has been a development in an ongoing federal court case related to the matter, according to a court document obtained by CBC News.
Ottawa lawyer Lawrence Greenspon is representing 23 men, women and children who are Canadians and are being held in ISIS detention camps in northeastern Syria. His original case was filed in Federal Court in 2020 on behalf of a five-year-old Canadian girl who was reunited with relatives in Canada later that year after her family was killed in an air strike. That case has now grown to represent others still in ISIS detention camps.
Greenspon's court application said the Autonomous Administration of Northeast Syria (AANES) has agreed that if the Canadian government makes an official request for repatriation, AANES will make it happen.
Greenspon said he has been trying to get the Canadian government to move forward with that official request.
The Federal Court has now adjourned hearings on the matter that were supposed to take place on Nov. 2 and 3.
Other countries have already moved forward and repatriated their citizens to prosecute them at home.
France repatriated 40 children and 15 women from Kurdish-run camps in northeastern Syria last week. Australia's government has said it's preparing to repatriate Australian women and children of Islamic State fighters from detention camps.
As of last year, Kazakhstan has repatriated more than 600 of its citizens, mostly women and children, along with some suspected ISIS fighters. Finland freed six children and two mothers last year.
The Belgian government says it plans to repatriate dozens of children and is considering accepting some women with children on a case-by-case basis.
RCMP arrest two women after they arrive in Canada from Syrian camps
By Stewart Bell Global News
Posted October 26, 2022 7:48 am
Updated October 26, 2022 2:02 pm
Two Canadians captured in Syria during the fight against the so-called Islamic State were arrested by the RCMP on Tuesday night after their flight landed in Montreal.
The women are the first the Canadian government has brought home from detention camps in northeast Syria for foreign ISIS members and their families.
Omaima Chouay, 27, was charged with four terrorism offences, including leaving Canada to participate in the activity of a terrorist group.
“According to the investigation, Ms. Chouay allegedly travelled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State terrorist group,” RCMP Insp. David Beaudoin told reporters.
She is the first Canadian captured by U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters to face charges in Canada. She was to appear in court Wednesday in Montreal.
A second Canadian, Kimberly Polman, was also arrested but not charged. Instead, RCMP are seeking a terrorism peace bond against her.
A copy of the peace bond application obtained by Global News alleges that police have reasonable grounds to believe Polman “may commit a terrorism offence.”
It asked the court to impose restrictions on her for 12 months.
Her lawyer Lawrence Greenspon said Polman was expected to be released after signing a recognizance and she would then return to Abbotsford, B.C.
Lovely, my home town!
A Canadian government delegation met with officials in rebel-held northeast Syria on Tuesday before the two women were handed over into their custody. Chouay’s two children were also brought back to Canada.
There is more on this story at Global News.
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