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US teacher trained women, children to become
ISIS suicide bombers – FBI
American citizen believed to be a leader of an all-female military battalion
charged with providing support to terrorists in Syria
© Dimitar Dilkoff / AFP
A 42-year-old US citizen, Allison Elizabeth Fluke-Ekren, has been captured in Syria and transferred into the custody of the FBI to appear before a Virginia court next week, the US Department of Justice disclosed on Saturday.
According to now unsealed documents, the woman, believed to be a former teacher, played an active role in helping Islamic State terrorists to train women and children as suicide bombers in Syria. Known by several names, including some Arabic, she also allegedly planned to carry out terrorist attacks on a college campus and a shopping mall in the US.
Citing a report from a special agent who investigated the woman, including through information provided by a number of cooperating witnesses, US officials revealed that Fluke-Ekren allegedly organized and led an IS battalion, known as the Khatiba Nusaybah, which was composed solely of women. She trained them to use assault rifles, grenades and suicide belts, documents suggest, adding that over 100 women and young girls had been drilled by the US citizen on behalf of IS.
Terrorist leaders “were proud to have an American instructor,” while she herself “wished to engage in violent jihad,” witnesses suggested.
Children were also trained “on the use of AK-47 assault rifles and suicide belts,” the US Department of Justice stated in their report. Fluke-Ekren is now charged with providing material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, and faces up to 20 years behind bars.
The woman – who traveled from the US to Egypt in 2008, and then ended up in Syria after spending some time in Libya and Iraq – has allegedly been involved with “a number of terrorism-related activities on behalf of ISIS from at least 2014.” A potential attack on a college campus in the US was among those activities. In a plot apparently approved by terrorist leaders, she planned to plant a backpack full of explosives on the campus grounds and flee. The attack planning was put on hold after she learned she was pregnant.
In a different scenario, Fluke-Ekren allegedly told a witness about her desire to kill as many people as possible at a shopping mall in the US. To carry out the attack, she would have parked a vehicle full of explosives at the mall’s underground parking and then remotely detonated it. “She considered any attack that did not kill a large number of individuals to be a waste of resources,” according to the documents.
The former US teacher was radicalized to a level “off the charts,” according to a witness who interacted with her. Asked to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being extremely radicalized, the witness gave her “11 or 12.”
Fluke-Ekren has been married several times and has multiple children, according to the investigation. One of her late husbands, who she met in the US, was a sniper trainer for IS, while another, also now dead, allegedly worked on a project involving drones carrying chemical weapons.
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Kuwaiti paper calls for normalization with Israel,
slams Palestinians
January 30, 2022
The Kuwaiti editor said that normalizing relations with “this most advanced state”
is the “right thing to do.”
By World Israel News Staff
Kuwaiti daily Arab Times called for normalization with Israel in a weekend editorial while questioning why the Jewish state continues to support relations with Palestinians despite continued slander against the Gulf States.
“When [the Palestinians] are happy, they curse the Gulf leaders and people. When they are angry, they use all of the defamatory and abusive words in their dictionary against us,” wrote Arab Times editor-in-chief Ahmed al-Jarallah.
Al-Jarallah added that the “Gulf states overlook all that by continuing to send them aid.”
He then slammed the Palestinian leadership for supporting authoritarian leaders such as the late Saddam Hussein, Jamal Abdul Nasser and Muammar al-Gaddafi, as well as assassinated IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, adding that this was “just the tip of the iceberg.”
“Is Palestine still our cause for which we bear all this harm caused by the Palestinians?” he asked readers in the editorial titled “Normalize, let the insulters fend for themselves.”
He said that the Gulf states should stop footing the bill for what is destroyed in Israeli counter-strikes and instead “let [the Palestinians] rebuild what they destroy by their own acts.”
The Kuwaiti editor added, “Enough is enough! The camel’s back has been broken from the burden of grief we endure due to the ingratitude of the Palestinians.”
He then urged the Gulf states to normalize relations with Israel, “due to the fact that peace with this most advanced country is the right thing to do.
“Let the foolish fend for themselves,” he concluded.
This is not the first time that the paper has pushed for better relations with Israel. Last year, al-Jarallah welcomed the United Arab Emirate’s normalization deal with the Jewish State, and in 2005 the paper said, “We have finally decided to leave the Palestinian cause to the Palestinians.”
This tells us two things - Arab Times is not a voice for the government; and there is some degree of Free Press in Kuwait.
However, it currently remains illegal to import, exchange or possess any Israeli goods inside Kuwait. Moreover, it is illegal to deal financially with anyone with any ties to the Jewish state, regardless of where that person lives.
Greece sent migrants to their deaths, Turkish minister claims
Minister says 12 of 22 migrants ‘pushed back’ by Greece
were stripped of their shoes and froze to death
Turkey’s Interior Minister, Suleyman Soylu, accused Greek authorities of allowing a dozen migrants to perish in the cold without their shoes, after turning them back from the Greek border. Soylu shared photos supposedly showing the migrants’ bodies.
Soylu posted a series of photos on Wednesday, which purportedly show the bodies of several migrants, allegedly part of a group of 22 turned back from the Greek border near the town of Ipsala. Soylu said that 12 migrants froze to death, having been “stripped off from their clothes and shoes.”
The “EU is remediless, weak and void of humane feelings,” Soylu declared, accusing the Greeks of acting like thugs against “victims,” and “tolerant towards FETO,” a Turkish opposition group considered terrorists by Ankara, whose members were recently caught attempting to flee to Greece.
The governor’s office of Edirne Province, where Ipsala is located, said that 11 of the migrants were discovered frozen to death, while the 12th was taken to hospital with severe frostbite but "could not be saved,” AFP reported.
Greek officials have not yet commented on Soylu’s claims.
Migration is just one focal point of tension between Turkey and Greece. Athens and Ankara have clashed over gas drilling rights in the Eastern Mediterranean, with the two bitter rivals almost coming to blows when two of their warships collided in 2020. Since then, Turkey has repeatedly accused Greece of mistreating - even killing - the migrants it pushes back into Turkey. Athens has dismissed the most alarming allegations as “utterly fake news,” and accused the Turkish government of using the migrants to “blackmail” financial and policy concessions out of the EU.
Turkey hosts some 3.6 million Syrian migrants and nearly 320,000 migrants of other nationalities, according to UN figures. It has previously released more than 10,000 of these migrants into Europe in an apparent bid to pressure Germany into supporting its military campaign in Syria, and has managed to secure billions of Euros from EU leaders to keep the migrants on Turkish soil.
Islamic State leader killed during US raid in Syria
By GHAITH ALSAYED, LOLITA C. BALDOR, BASSEM MROUE and ZEKE MILLER
ATMEH, Syria (AP) — The leader of the violent Islamic State group was killed Thursday, blowing himself up along with members of his family during an overnight raid carried out by U.S. special operations forces in northwestern Syria, President Joe Biden said.
The raid targeted Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, who took over as head of the militant group on Oct. 31, 2019, just days after leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died during a U.S. raid in the same area. Biden said al-Qurayshi died as al-Baghdadi did, by exploding a bomb that killed himself and members of his family, including women and children, as U.S. forces approached.
The operation came as IS has been trying for a resurgence, with a series of attacks in the region, including an assault late last month to seize a prison in northeast Syria holding at least 3,000 IS detainees, its boldest operation in years.
“Thanks to the bravery of our troops this horrible terrorist leader is no more,” Biden said. He said al-Qurayshi had been responsible for the prison strike, as well as genocide against the Yazidi people in Iraq in 2014.
About 50 U.S. special operations forces landed in helicopters and attacked a house in a rebel-held corner of Syria, clashing for two hours with gunmen, witnesses said. Residents described continuous gunfire and explosions that jolted the town of Atmeh near the Turkish border, an area dotted with camps for internally displaced people from Syria’s civil war.
Biden said he ordered U.S. forces to “take every precaution available to minimize civilian casualties,” the reason they did not conduct an airstrike on the home.
First responders reported that 13 people had been killed, including six children and four women.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said U.S. forces were able to evacuate 10 people from the building: a man, a woman and four children from the first floor and four children from the second floor. He said when al-Qurayshi detonated the bomb, he also killed his wife and two children. Kirby said that U.S. officials were conducting an assessment to determine whether American action resulted in any civilian deaths.
U.S. forces took fingerprints and DNA, which confirmed al-Qurayshi’s death, officials said.
Biden, along with Vice President Kamala Harris and senior national security aides monitored a live-feed of the operation from the White House Situation Room according to an official. The president was kept abreast of the commandos’ long flight out of Syria by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan overnight.
The operation marked a military success for the United States at an important time after setbacks elsewhere — including the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal — had led allies and opponents to conclude U.S. power globally was weakening.
The house, surrounded by olive trees in fields outside Atmeh, was left with its top floor shattered and blood spattered inside. A journalist on assignment for The Associated Press, and several residents, said they saw body parts scattered near the site. Most residents spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
“The mission was successful,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a brief statement. “There were no U.S. casualties.”
Idlib is largely controlled by Turkish-backed fighters but is also an al-Qaida stronghold and home to several of its top operatives. Other militants, including extremists from the rival IS group, have also found refuge in the region.
“The first moments were terrifying; no one knew what was happening,” said Jamil el-Deddo, a resident of a nearby refugee camp. “We were worried it could be Syrian aircraft, which brought back memories of barrel bombs that used to be dropped on us,” he added, referring to crude explosives-filled containers used by President Bashar Assad’s forces against opponents during the Syrian conflict.
The top floor of the low house was nearly destroyed, sending white bricks tumbling to the ground below.
Blood could be seen on the walls and floor of the remaining structure. A wrecked bedroom had a child’s wooden crib and a stuffed rabbit doll. On one damaged wall, a blue plastic baby swing was still hanging. Religious books, including a biography of Islam’s Prophet Mohammad, were in the house.
Al-Qurayshi had kept an extremely low profile since he took over leadership of the Islamic State. He had not appeared in public, and rarely released any audio recordings. His influence and day-to-day involvement in the group’s operations was not known and it is difficult to gauge how his death will affect the group.
U.S. officials said Al-Qurayshi never left his third floor apartment, where he lived with his family, except to bathe on the building’s roof. He communicated only through couriers, according to U.S. officials, directly overseeing the group’s operations in Syria, including last month’s assault on attack on the prison.
In December, a tabletop model of the three-floor house was brought to the Situation Room.
The second floor of the house was occupied by a lower-ranking Islamic State leader and his family, but the first floor contained civilians who were unconnected to the terrorist group and unaware of al-Qurayshi’s presence, according to U.S. officials, who described them as the IS leader’s unwitting human shields.
Biden gave “the final go” on the mission on Tuesday morning during his daily national security briefing in the Oval Office, where he was joined by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley.
In the first stages of the operation, U.S. commandos approached the building and announced their presence. Residents and activists described witnessing a large ground assault, with U.S. forces using megaphones urging women and children to leave the area.
Much to the relief of U.S. officials, the family on the first floor exited the building unharmed.
The IS lieutenant, who officials did not name, who lived on the second floor barricaded himself inside along with his wife and engaged in combat with the commandos who entered the home after the explosion. After a firefight, in which both were killed, officials said four children left the building. Kirby said that it appeared that a child on the second floor also died, though the circumstances were not clear.
The special operations forces spent about two hours on the ground, longer than usual for such an operation — indicative, U.S. officials said, of caution to minimize civilian casualties.
Before they left, another firefight erupted with a local extremist group. At least two fighters were killed, officials said.
U.S. troops launched the airborne raid from a base in the region, but officials would not specify the precise location due to operational security concerns. They added that the U.S. “deconflicted” the operation with a “a range of entities” but did not specify whether those included Russia, which has supported the Assad government in Syria.
There was no comment from the Syrian government, which rarely acknowledges or comments on attacks by foreign countries targeting areas outside its control.
A U.S. official said one of the helicopters in the raid suffered a mechanical problem and was redirected to a site nearby, where it was destroyed.
Through slickly engineered propaganda, including brutal beheading videos, IS emerged as a dominant global extremist threat in the past decade. Its clarion call to followers in the West to either join its self-described caliphate in Syria, or to commit acts of violence at home, inspired killings in the U.S. as well as thousands of travelers determined to become foreign fighters. The allure of IS to would-be militants has proved challenging for the West to fully stamp out even amid leadership changes and U.S. military strikes and raids.
At the height of its territorial conquests around 2014, the Islamic State controlled more than 40,000 square miles stretching from Syria to Iraq and ruled over 8 million people.
Last month‘s attack on the prison in Hasaka marked the group’s biggest military operation since it was defeated and its members scattered underground in 2019. The attack appeared aimed to break free senior IS operatives in the prison.
It took 10 days of fighting for U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led forces to retake the prison fully, and the force said more than 120 of its fighters and prison workers were killed along with 374 militants.
The U.S.-led coalition has targeted high-profile militants on several occasions in recent years, aiming to disrupt what U.S. officials say is a secretive cell known as the Khorasan group that is planning external attacks. A U.S. airstrike killed al-Qaida’s second in command, former bin Laden aide Abu al-Kheir al-Masri, in Syria in 2017.
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Baldor and Miller reported from Washington, Mroue from Beirut. Associated Press writers Zeina Karam in Beirut, Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad and Eric Tucker, Chris Megerian, Ellen Knickmeyer and Alexandra Jaffe in Washington contributed reporting.
Atmeh, SYR
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