Australian authorities say several women accused of ties to Islamic State militants will be arrested and subject to criminal probes if they arrive back from Syria.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Wednesday his office learned that four women and nine children had booked flights from Damascus to Australia. He did not provide an arrival time.
The Australian Federal Police have been investigating citizens who travelled to the Islamic State group’s former territories in Syria since 2015, Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett said. Those inquiries have examined possible terrorism offenses and alleged crimes against humanity, including claims of slave trading. Barrett said some returnees will be taken into custody and charged on arrival, while others will remain under active investigation. She added that the children will be placed in programs aimed at countering violent extremism.
Burke emphasized the government’s limited role: officials must issue travel documents, but the federal government has repeatedly maintained it is not facilitating repatriation. He criticized the women’s decisions to travel in support of IS and said that stance underpins the government’s refusal to assist.
The women had been held at Roj Camp near Syria’s border with Iraq and left that facility last week. Syrian authorities previously told The Associated Press that Canberra had “refused to receive them.” Burke said there are significant legal limits on preventing citizens from returning to their country.
In February, a separate attempt to repatriate 34 women and children from the same camp was halted by Syrian authorities. At that time Australia issued a temporary exclusion order barring one woman from re-entering the country. Those orders, introduced in 2019 to block high‑risk former IS fighters, can prevent a citizen’s return for up to two years. They cannot be applied to children under 14, and the government has ruled out separating young children from their mothers. Burke said the earlier exclusion order remains in force.
Under Australian law, travel to the IS-held city of Raqqa between 2014 and 2017 without a lawful reason is an offense that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment.
After IS lost its territorial caliphate in 2019, former fighters, their spouses and children from a number of countries were held in camps and detention sites in northeast Syria. Although IS no longer controls territory, it continues to carry out attacks in Syria and Iraq. The larger al-Hol camp has been closed, and U.S. forces have transferred thousands suspected of IS links to Iraq to face trial.
Those transfers followed fighting in January that saw government forces retake much of the area once held by the Syrian Democratic Forces; the unrest allowed many detainees to flee al-Hol and led to some escapes from detention facilities.
Australian governments have previously repatriated women and children from Syrian camps on two occasions, and others have returned without official assistance.