(AP) A woman who once lived in Kansas has been arrested after federal prosecutors charged her with joining the Islamic State group and leading an all-female battalion of AK-47-wielding militants.
The U.S. attorney in Alexandria, Virginia, announced Saturday that Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, has been charged with providing material support to a terrorist organization.
The criminal complaint was filed under seal back in 2019 but made public Saturday after Fluke-Ekren was brought back to the U.S. Friday to face charges. Her alleged participation in the Islamic State had not been publicly known before Saturday’s announcement.
Prosecutors say Fluke-Ekren wanted to recruit operatives to attack a college campus in the U.S. and discussed a terrorist attack on a shopping mall. She told one witness that “she considered any attack that did not kill a large number of individuals to be a waste of resources,” according to an FBI affidavit.
