A US woman has admitted to directing an all-female squadron in Syria for the so-called Islamic State and preparing assaults on American soil.
Allison Fluke-Ekren admitted to preparing over 100 women and girls for violence and pleaded guilty to one count of providing support to the gang.
After leaving the United States in 2011, the mother and teacher-turned-IS leader worked with a terror cell in Libya before heading to Syria.
When she is sentenced in October, she might face a maximum of 20 years in prison.
After living in Egypt and Turkey, Fluke-Ekren, 42, a former biology student and school teacher, travelled to Syria to join the group.
She was the commander of Khatiba Nusaybah, an all-female battalion located in Raqqa, Syria, before she joined IS.
According to police, her primary task was to educate women and children on how to use weaponry ranging from AK-47 rifles and grenades to suicide vests.
She acknowledged training the all-female gang in a Virginia court on Tuesday but maintained she never attempted to recruit children.
Fluke-Ekren also lived in Mosul, Iraq, after it was captured by IS fighters under the alias Umm Mohammed al-Amriki.
One witness testified that her level of radicalization was “off the charts,” an “11 or 12” on a scale of one to ten, according to prosecutors.
She allegedly acknowledged talking about terrorist attacks in the United States, including at a university and a shopping mall.
Her second husband, according to the documents, was a member of Ansar Al-Sharia, the militant group that stormed a US compound in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.
After analysing US documents recovered from the Benghazi attack, she and her husband, who was ultimately murdered in an airstrike, produced a report for the group’s leadership.
She sobbed in court when the judge asked if she was accepting the plea deal because of her huge family.
Her relatives had already petitioned the court to prevent her from contacting them.
The family claim she left a “trail of betrayal,” according to one US prosecutor, and they may testify against her during her sentence on October 25.
