CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s federal government confirmed Tuesday that a group of seven women and 12 children with ties to the Islamic State terror group have arranged independent travel out of Syrian detention camps to return to Australia, with legal consequences awaiting any member found to have violated Australian counterterrorism laws.
The cohort is scheduled to land in Sydney and Melbourne later Tuesday, marking the second organized repatriation of Australian citizens from northeastern Syria in less than three weeks. A previous group of 13 Australians in similar circumstances arrived in the country on May 7, also without government support. Three of the four women in that earlier group have since been arrested and jailed on charges including slavery and terrorism-related offenses, and remain in custody as their legal cases proceed.
In an official statement released Tuesday, Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke made clear that the Australian government refused to provide any logistical, financial or diplomatic assistance to facilitate the group’s return. “These are people who made the horrific, deliberate choice to join a dangerous terrorist organization, and they chose to put their own children in an unspeakable, dangerous situation,” Burke said. “Any person among this group who has committed crimes can expect to face the full force of Australian law.”
Burke emphasized that Australian law enforcement and national intelligence agencies have been developing and updating contingency plans to manage the return of IS-linked citizens since 2014, with established monitoring and risk mitigation protocols already in place. “The government’s top priority, as always, is protecting the safety of the Australian community,” he added.
Following the departure of this latest group, at least two Australian citizens remain held at Roj Camp, the facility in northeastern Syria near the Iraqi border that has detained people linked to the Islamic State since the terror group’s territorial defeat in 2019. One of the remaining women was blocked from joining this repatriation group by a temporary exclusion order, a legal tool introduced in 2019 that allows Australian authorities to bar high-risk citizens from returning to the country for up to two years. She was originally blocked from travel back to Australia in February, and remains in the camp.
To date, Australian authorities have overseen two government-coordinated repatriations of women and children from Syrian IS detention camps, while a number of other Australian citizens have returned to the country through independent, unpublicized arrangements. In the May 7 repatriation, two women were taken into custody immediately after landing in Melbourne on allegations their family purchased an enslaved Yazidi woman, while a third woman was arrested at Sydney Airport on charges of being a member of a terrorist organization and traveling to and remaining in a territory controlled by a declared terror group.