Airliners carrying women and children linked to Islamic State group land in Australia

The Australian government had condemned the women for supporting Islamic State militants by traveling to Syria and had refused to help repatriate them.

Police have been investigating for more than a decade Australians’ potential involvement in atrocities while in Syria, including terrorism offenses and crimes against humanity such as slave trading.

Deakin University extremism expert Joshua Roose said Australian authorities were investigating abuses within the caliphate including enslaving Yazidi women and harsh policing of sharia law.

“Some of the worst forms of violence were in fact enacted by women, so we need to understand that it’s a problem,” Roose told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

ABC reporter Bridget Rollason, who was on the Melbourne flight from Doha, said some of the women told her of spending as long as 12 years in Syria, with children born in hellish conditions inside the camps.

“When I did actually ask them about the prospect of facing arrest, they actually told me that they were willing to take the hit, they said, for their children because they want to bring their children back to Australia,” Rollason said.

“One of the woman I spoke to said that what she missed the most was coffee. She said she couldn’t wait to get to Little Collins Street in Melbourne to have a coffee again,” she added.

Under Australian law, it was an offense punishable by up to 10 years in prison to travel to the former Syrian Islamic State group stronghold of Raqqa without a legitimate reason from 2014 to 2017.

A previous attempt to return 34 women and children to Australia from the same camp in February was turned back by Syrian authorities.

On that occasion, Australia’s government banned one of the women from returning.

The woman, who officials did not identify, had been issued with a temporary exclusion order which Australia can use to prevent high-risk citizens from returning for up to two years.

The orders were created by laws introduced in 2019 to prevent defeated Islamic State fighters from returning to Australia.

That woman is still banned from Australia by the order and did not return on Thursday. Opposition lawmakers had urged the government to make the same orders against the four newly returned women before they boarded their flights.

Such orders can’t be made against children younger than 14. Australia has ruled out separating mothers from children who want to return from Syria.

The child welfare-focused aid agency Save the Children failed in a court bid in 2024 to compel the Australian government to repatriate citizens from Syrian camps.

Save the Children Australia chief executive Mat Tinkler said Australian authorities now had to give priority to the returned children’s welfare.

“Two-thirds of this cohort that we’re talking about … are children. So there’s been a lot of focus on the women and the choices they may have made. But we need the focus now to be on these children and give them a chance of resuming a normal life here in Australia,” Tinkler said.

Australian governments have repatriated Australian women and children from Syrian detention camps on two occasions. Other Australians have returned without government assistance.

Rod Mcguirk, The Associated Press

by The Canadian Press

Airliners carrying women and children linked to Islamic State group land in Australia

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