They said they were physically and sexually abused by their mother, and described the mistreatment successful item successful letters to the court. Fluke-Ekren denied the abuse.
The daughter, Leyla Ekren, said “lust for power and power” drove her parent to resistance the household halfway crossed the satellite to find a violent radical that would let Fluke-Ekren to flourish, during a unfortunate interaction connection she gave astatine the hearing.
She said her parent became skilled astatine hiding the maltreatment she inflicted. She described a condition wherever her parent poured an off-brand lice medicine each implicit her look arsenic a punishment and it started to blister her look and pain her eyes. Fluke-Ekren past tried to lavation the chemicals disconnected her daughers’s face, but Leyla Ekren resisted.
“I wanted radical to spot what benignant of idiosyncratic she was. I wanted it to unsighted me,” she said arsenic her parent sat a fewer feet away, resting her caput connected her manus with a look of disbelief. After her children testified, she glared successful their direction.
Fluke-Ekren’s presumption arsenic a U.S.-born pistillate who roseate to a enactment presumption successful the Islamic State makes her communicative unsocial among panic cases. Prosecutors accidental the maltreatment she inflicted connected her children from a young property helps explicate however she went from an 81-acre workplace successful Overbrook, Kansas, to an Islamic State person successful Syria, with stops successful Egypt and Libya on the way.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Raj Parekh said Fluke-Ekren’s household sent her to an elite backstage schoolhouse successful Topeka and that she grew up successful a unchangeable home. Parekh said Fluke-Ekren’s contiguous household was unanimous successful its tendency to spot her punished to the maximum grade possible, a condition the seasoned authoritative described arsenic highly rare.
“There is thing successful Fluke-Ekren’s inheritance that tin explicate her conduct, which was driven by fanaticism, power, manipulation, delusional invincibility, and utmost cruelty,” Parekh said.
Fluke-Ekren asked for conscionable a two-year condemnation truthful she could rise her young children. She said astatine the outset of a lengthy, weepy code that she takes work for her actions earlier rationalizing and minimizing her conduct.
“We conscionable lived a precise mean life,” she told the justice astir her clip successful Syria, showing pictures of her kids astatine a play pizza dinner.
She denied the maltreatment allegations, and tried to impeach her oldest lad of manipulating her girl into making them.
She portrayed the Khatiba Nusaybah arsenic thing much akin to a assemblage halfway for women that morphed into a bid of self-defense classes arsenic it became wide that the metropolis of Raqqa, the Islamic State stronghold wherever she lived, faced invasion.
She acknowledged that women and girls were taught to usage termination belts and automatic weapons but portrayed it arsenic information grooming to debar accidents successful a warfare portion wherever specified weapons were common.
Judge Leonie Brinkema, though, made wide she was unimpressed by Fluke-Ekren’s justifications. At 1 point, Fluke-Ekren explained the request for women to support themselves against the anticipation of rape by force soldiers. “Sexual unit is not OK successful immoderate circumstance,” she said.
Brinkema interrupted to inquire Fluke-Ekren astir the daughter’s allegation that she was forced to wed an Islamic State combatant who raped her astatine the property of 13.
“She was a fewer weeks distant from 14,” Fluke-Ekren responded successful protest, aboriginal saying, “It was her decision. I ne'er forced her.”
Parekh described Fluke-Ekren arsenic an “empress of ISIS” whose husbands roseate to elder ranks successful the Islamic State, often to beryllium killed successful fighting.
Even wrong the Islamic State, radical who knew Fluke-Ekren described her radicalization arsenic “off the charts” and different violent groups refused her plans to signifier a pistillate battalion until she yet recovered a taker successful the Islamic State, Parekh said.
Fluke-Ekren’s actions “added a caller magnitude to the darkest broadside of humanity,” Parekh said.
In summation to forming the battalion, Fluke-Ekren admitted that portion surviving successful Libya, she helped translate, reappraisal and summarize documents taken from U.S. diplomatic facilities aft the 2012 violent onslaught successful Benghazi.
English (US)