US Woman who Led ISIS Battalion Gets 20 Years in Prison

Allison Fluke-Ekren. AFP
Allison Fluke-Ekren. AFP
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US Woman who Led ISIS Battalion Gets 20 Years in Prison

Allison Fluke-Ekren. AFP
Allison Fluke-Ekren. AFP

An American woman who joined ISIS in Syria, leading an all-female military battalion, was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a US court Tuesday.

Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, who grew up on a farm in Kansas, was given the maximum possible sentence by US District Judge Leonie Brinkema after pleading guilty to terror charges in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia.

"You're obviously a very intelligent woman," Brinkema told Fluke-Ekren, rejecting her claims that she was manipulated by her Turkish-born second husband.

"There's no question that you were providing material support to a terrorist organization," the judge said.

For more than eight years, Fluke-Ekren was engaged in a "terrorism crime spree" across war zones in Libya, Iraq, and Syria, including training other women and young girls to undertake attacks for the ISIS, US Attorney Raj Parekh said.

Fluke-Ekren adopted the nom de guerre Umm Mohammed al-Amriki and "in effect became the empress of ISIS," Parekh said. "She brainwashed young girls and trained them to kill."

Her sentencing included dramatic remarks to the judge by one of her daughters.

Leyla Ekren, who was married off to an ISIS militant in Syria when she was just 13 years old, said her mother was motivated by a "lust for control and power."

"I want people to see what kind of person she was," her daughter said.

"She abandoned me in Raqqa with my rapist," she said in a reference to her ISIS fighter-husband.

At one point prosecutors played audio recordings of telephone conversations between Fluke-Ekren and her daughter taped by the FBI.

Her daughter, who was in the public gallery, plugged her ears with her fingers as the tapes were played aloud.

In a written statement to the court, her son Gabriel, who like his sister waived anonymity, said his mother is a "monster without love for her children, without an excuse for her actions."

"She has the blood, pain, and suffering of all of her children on her hands," he said.

Fluke-Ekren, who was wearing a dark green prison jacket and black headscarf, addressed the court and asked the judge for a "compassionate sentence" of just two years in prison.

"I deeply regret my choices," she told the judge. "To anyone who has been hurt by my actions I ask forgiveness."



Zelenskiy Says Trump is in Disinformation Bubble on Ukraine

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy gives a press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, on February 19, 2025, amid the Russian attack on Ukraine. TETIANA DZHAFAROVA/Pool via REUTERS
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy gives a press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, on February 19, 2025, amid the Russian attack on Ukraine. TETIANA DZHAFAROVA/Pool via REUTERS
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Zelenskiy Says Trump is in Disinformation Bubble on Ukraine

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy gives a press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, on February 19, 2025, amid the Russian attack on Ukraine. TETIANA DZHAFAROVA/Pool via REUTERS
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy gives a press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, on February 19, 2025, amid the Russian attack on Ukraine. TETIANA DZHAFAROVA/Pool via REUTERS

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hit back on Wednesday at Donald Trump's suggestion that Ukraine was responsible for Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion, saying the US president was trapped in a Russian disinformation bubble.

Speaking ahead of talks with Trump's Ukraine envoy a day after Trump said Ukraine "should never have started" the conflict, Zelenskiy said he would like Trump's team to have "more truth" about Ukraine.

The Ukrainian leader said Trump's assertion that his approval rating was just 4% was Russian disinformation and that any attempt to replace him would fail, Reuters reported.

"We have evidence that these figures are being discussed between America and Russia. That is, President Trump ... unfortunately lives in this disinformation space," Zelenskiy told Ukrainian TV.

Less than a month into his presidency, Trump has upended US policy on Ukraine and Russia, ending Washington's bid to isolate Russia over its invasion of Ukraine with a Trump-Putin phone call and talks between senior US and Russian officials.

Trump said he may meet Putin this month. The Kremlin said such a meeting could take longer to prepare but Russia's sovereign wealth fund said it expected a number of US companies to return to Russia as early as the second quarter.

The US-Russia talks on ending the war in Ukraine have excluded both Ukraine and Europe, which Trump says must step up to guarantee any ceasefire. Zelenskiy has suggested giving US companies the right to extract valuable minerals in Ukraine in return for US security guarantees, but indicated that Trump was not offering that.

Zelenskiy told a press conference the US had given Ukraine $67 billion in weapons and $31.5 billion in budget support, and that American demands for $500 billion in minerals are "not a serious conversation", and that he could not sell his country.

He was expected to meet visiting US Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg, who said as he arrived in Kyiv that he expected substantial talks as the war approaches its three-year mark.

"We understand the need for security guarantees," Kellogg told journalists, saying that part of his mission would be "to sit and listen".

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lauded Trump for saying that previous US support of Ukraine's bid to join the NATO military alliance was a major cause of the war in Ukraine.