GUILTY PLEA

Ex-Kansas Teacher Cops to Leading an All-Female ISIS Battalion

Allison Fluke-Ekren was the first American woman to be prosecuted for holding a leadership position in the Islamic State.

Former Kansas teacher Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, pleaded guilty Tuesday to a charge of conspiring to provide material support for terrorism after admitting she led an all-female battalion for the Islamic State in 2017, The Washington Post reports. Fluke-Ekren trained more than 100 women and girls in the Khatiba Nusaybah battalion on how to use assault rifles, grenades and suicide bombs to defend Islamic State-controlled Raqqa, Syria, federal prosecutors in Virginia wrote in a January court filing. According to extremism experts, she is the first U.S.-born woman to be prosecuted for a leadership position in the Islamic State. Fluke-Ekren grew up in Kansas City and Topeka, but moved with her family to Egypt in 2008, where she and her second husband spent more than six years helping terrorist groups, according to court documents. She faces up to 20 years in prison.