A woman in the United States has been charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorist group as she is accused of leading an all-female Islamic State battalion in Syria.
The US Justice Department announced on Saturday (January 29) and informed that the woman has been identified as Allison Fluke-Ekren, formerly of the US state of Kansas.
As per the justice department, Ekren had been named in a sealed criminal complaint filed in 2019 in a federal Virginia court and if convicted of the charges, she will face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
The documents revealed that she had planned an attack on a US college campus and spoke of organising a devastating attack on an American shopping mall.
As per court documents, she travelled to Syria for the purpose of committing or supporting terrorism and had allegedly been involved with a number of terrorism-related activities on behalf of ISIS from at least 2014.
The statement said the 42-year-old Fluke-Ekren had been apprehended previously in Syria but was transferred into FBI custody on Friday.
As per the statement, she is expected to make her initial appearance before the US District Court for Eastern Virginia, in the Washington suburb of Alexandria, on Monday at 2:00pm (local time).
